I was standing in my front yard, staring up at the side of my house, oblivious to how warm it was. Oblivious to my surroundings. Oblivious to my former neighbor who was calling out to me: \u201cIt\u2019s still there, you know,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHuh?\u201d I asked, slightly dazed. \u201cWhat\u2019s still there?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhatever you\u2019re looking at. It\u2019s\nstill there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yep, it was confirmed, and\nofficial: I looked like a crazy man. And maybe I had gone crazy, because what\nhe said made no sense. What I was looking at WASN\u2019T still there. It had moved.\nI couldn\u2019t find it anymore. Gone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A caterpillar. For crying out loud,\nI was looking for a giant caterpillar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cra-zy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OK, maybe not crazy. But I think\nI\u2019ve become a bit of a butterfly-guy. I\u2019ve tried to go my whole life without\nbecoming any kind of \u201c-guy.\u201d Not the writer-guy or the runner-guy. Not the wow-he-sure-has-weird-hair-guy.\nI pull the ripcord just as I near the fanatic stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then a bunch of dang butterflies\nlaid a bunch of eggs on my milkweed and suddenly I\u2019m the dang BUTTERFLY-GUY!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because, I got to tell you, they\u2019re\npretty fascinating! I mean, like, alien species fascinating. Think about this:\nA creature flies up and lays some eggs. Those eggs hatch into strange prickly\nbeasts with lots of legs and an appetite for devouring everything down to nubs.\nOh, and their plant du jour (milkweed) is poisonous! Then fat on poisonous\nplant leaves, they glue their butts to a nearby stick or railing, go into a\nweird poisonous plant coma, transform into a chrysalis (think pea pod ate the\ncaterpillar) and a few days later \u2026 PRESTO! \u2026 a beautiful butterfly emerges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shoot, all I need is the butterfly to\nattack my face while I\u2019m leaning over to investigate and we have the makings of\na great horror movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has become my life now. I\nstand and stare, watching fat caterpillars gnaw on leaves. Or I poke around the\nbushes trying to find chrysalises. All while screaming: \u201cAHH! Butterfly\nattacked my face \u2026 nope. False alarm. Just a cobweb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neighbors don\u2019t know what to make\nof me. \u201cHe\u2019s staring at that blank walk again,\u201d they say. \u201cI told you we never\nshould have bought this house!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s getting harder to find\nthem. I\u2019m like a kid on Easter morning trying to hunt down decorated eggs. I\nrun around wearing next to nothing screaming, \u201cI found one! See!!! Over here!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One is dangling from the windowsill.\nAnother one is on the fence. And then there\u2019s one \u2026 wait a minute \u2026 that guy\u2019s\ntrying to steal my car!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have I become? We went out and\nbought a bunch of extra milkweed. I put a chrysalis that had broken off a\nbranch into a protected butterfly aviary. And I\u2019m even considering getting a\nshirt that says: \u201cJust Chew It.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess there are worse things to\nbe \u2013 the brews-his-own-paint-thinner-guy? The recreational-clown-guy? And butterflies\ndo their part for the environment, so that\u2019s good. But maybe I need to scale\nback a little bit. The midnight searches in the yard with the flashlight is\nstarting to freak out the neighbors, and I\u2019m suddenly starting to see a lot of \u201cFor\nSale\u201d signs right around me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was standing in my front yard, staring up at the side of my house, oblivious to how warm it was. Oblivious to my surroundings. Oblivious to my former neighbor who was calling out to me: \u201cIt\u2019s still there, you know,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHuh?\u201d I asked, slightly dazed. \u201cWhat\u2019s still there?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever you\u2019re looking at. It\u2019s still there.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yep, it was confirmed, and official: I looked like a crazy man. And maybe I had gone crazy, because what he said made no sense. What I was looking at WASN\u2019T still there. It had moved. I couldn\u2019t find it anymore. Gone!<\/p>\n
A caterpillar. For crying out loud, I was looking for a giant caterpillar. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,558,563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-nutshells","category-florida","category-houses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1894,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}