When I see an insect that scares me I always freeze up, especially when I'm inside. I am terrified of caterpillars. When I was 4 I went to NCRC a beautiful mansion transformed into a preschool with expansive grounds covered in blackberry trees and caterpillar nests. I used to like the little gypsy moth larvae they entertained me up until that faithful day when one fell on my tennis shoe and I froze. It was the first occurrence of me freezing at the sight of these fuzzy creatures and I didn't know what to do. I felt like I couldn't pick him off, even though I held them all the time up until then, and started shaking my foot. The thing was stuck. I started to panic and shook harder and harder with a final dramatic fling and I'm sure eminent death. Since then I've been phobic when it comes to any caterpillars so when I intended to check on container drive this morning and saw a fuzzy brown caterpillar sitting in the middle of the walk, my only path, I froze. I felt like I was being held hostage. I couldn't walk over to the drive and I didn't want to let him out of my sight for fear that he'd find his way inside or into my plants where he'd "get me" later. So I stood there frozen thinking of how to get rid of him. Finally I saw the yard stick and grabbed it. I slowly approached the fuzzy worm with the stick and pushed him a bit to see if he would attempt a mad dash. He didn't. I actually think he was dead; dropped by some evil bird to frighten me. After pushing him around for another second or two to check the status of life I chopped him. Guts shot out so I felt comfortable that he was dead and flung him, with the stick, under the table where he'd shrivel and disappear out of sight.
I moved into container drive slowly, just in case more were about. I checked the containers then ran inside. I was still too thoroughly creeped out to stay out. When I got inside I looked up "brown fuzzy caterpillar" and got "wooly bear", a lot, which was incorrect but then I found out that it was a garden tiger moth larva. Gross! I'm starting to think that gardens attract too many gross worm varieties for my particular phobia.
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