The Very Very Very Hungry Caterpillar
“Hello, hello, hello.
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me”
I am on my way to an interview. But this is not your every-day run of the mill, what you’d expect job interview. No. Not in the least. In fact, I am on my way to the city to interview for one of The Colonies, which is my absolutely last and, to be honest, only chance at survival. My name is Katrina (Kat) Moseby, and this is my story.  As for you? Well, if you are reading this, you obviously aced the interview yourself.  You must be one of the lucky few humans still alive on Earth.
Before I introduce you to my life during The Enlargement I should start from the beginning. The beginning when everything was fine, caterpillars were small, and the primary concern of the students at Exeter High School was summer vacation:  a few days away. It was the fifth of June. And, just like any of the other 180 school days, I stumbled out of bed to the sound of my alarm, rushed to get ready for school, and ran out the door with a bang. I had a test first, third, and seventh period, but before that, I had to drop off my application for a parking permit for next year. I was walking into the school when I accidentally stepped on a gypsy moth caterpillar. Gross. I grimaced and slowly scuffed its’ guts off of my squeaky new Converse in hopes that no one would notice. Did it leave a smudge? No. Good. On the rest of the short walk from the parking lot to the entrance doors of the school, I saw 2... 7... 26(!) other green, black, and red plump caterpillars. Strange.
I wish I could go back to those days when it was somewhat unusual or strange to see a caterpillar.  It’s hard to imagine that my little brother used to collect caterpillars for fun!  He’d house them in paper cups with a few leaves to nourish them, and put plastic around the cup, poked with pencil holes so his new-found pets could survive.  Survive!  Ha!  It’s ironic how things change and how now the caterpillar is actually surviving at the expense of us.  How I wish someone could scoop me up, put me in a little habitat, safe from predators so that I could survive.  But then again, I guess that is why I’m heading to the interview.  Securing a position in one of the safety colonies would ensure just that:  my safety and my survival. 
I’ve been walking for about five hours already today, having covered almost 15 miles.  I know I’m going to have to come up with a plan of where to sleep tonight, because my destination, Boston, is still about 30 miles away.  I stop to adjust my heavy backpack and take a sip of water.  I’m very warm because I’m wearing a rather heavy yellow fisherman’s raincoat that I have secured around my wrists with rubber bands.  My knee high Bogg boots, ski helmet and goggles really pull it all together...  I certainly look out of place walking on the breakdown lane of I 95 S but let’s be honest, there aren’t too many people left to really notice. 
Let’s backtrack to June for a minute though, back when my normal dress was jean shorts and t-shirts instead of all this protective garb.  Back in June I didn’t even know what a Lymantria dispar dispar actually was.  Well you know of course.  Now everyone knows more about the Gypsy Moth caterpillar than they’d ever want to, but back then, we just thought of them as a pest.  Back in June, we didn’t know that the word Lymantria means destroyer and that dispar means “unequal” in Latin and that destroy was exactly what these furry squirmy insects were about to do. 

“When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse.
Out of the corner of my eye”
Thoughtout history, the voracious gypsy moths have often made unwanted appearances.  They have an unfulfilled hunger for anything that gets in their path.  These starving, greedy, piggish, ravenous beasts are never satisfied. Have you ever heard the expression ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse?’ Well that’s pretty much what these creatures do now.
Even before The Enlargement started, every couple of years there would be a really bad summer during which the gypsy moth population would exponentially grow and destroy everything. 1981 and 2007 were two of these years. The caterpillars devastated entire forests, pillaged gardens, and ate literally everything in their paths. Nothing could stop them. Every square inch of the northeast seemed to be infested these years. Houses swarmed with these creatures clinging and climbing like a black sheet on the walls. My parents lived through one of these summers, and they thought it  was truly horrifying.  They claimed it ruined their summer.  At least it didn’t ruin their lives.  When I used to hear stories about these especially terrible years, I would cringe and become sort of itchy, but honestly, now, I laugh at what a commotion this caused. Seems like almost nothing anymore.
Over the past few decades, gypsy moths have been getting slightly larger and larger. Their quick reproductive cycles allow for huge mutations to occur in a rather short period of time. For some reason, still unknown today by the even world’s best scientists (could this possibly because most of them are dead?),  gypsy moths have exponentially grown in size. The gypsy moth caterpillar of my parent’s youth, used to the old ‘normal’ size of about 2 inches in length.  Because of a years of mutations, by the summer I was fifteen years old, they grew to a whopping average of 12 INCHES LONG. Yeah, that’s an entire foot.  A caterpillar as long as a man’s foot.  And let me repeat the word AVERAGE. Yes, exactly you heard me right. Average. Meaning there are caterpillars longer and bigger and more blood-thirsty than that. Horrific. The idea of this is enough to make anyone pass out thinking about. But this is my new life, and the new future of the world. “Our world” is now becoming theirs.
Originally the Lymantria Dispar in its larva stage used to mainly eat a diet of leaves: oak, maple, apple, crabapple, aspen, willow, ash, pine, spruce, and more. With so many giant (and therefore even more hungry) caterpillars, the forests became completely barren in only a few days time. They moved on to things other than just trees: every plant and green living organism it could find. Once they ran out of these, they started moving on to animals. Animals that were once much larger and more powerful than a caterpillar were now prey. It’s funny (actually it really is quite accurate) that the name for a group of caterpillars is an army. This is exactly how they hunted for their next meal: like soldiers attacking the prey before they could see anything coming and slowly chomping its’ guts with sloppy, sideways chews. Crunch…. Crunch…. Crunch…. That’s the terrifying sound I wake up to and go to sleep with every night. Well- in the beginning before the deforestation occurred.  Later, when most of the world was dead, the chewing sound prevailed, but it was somewhat muffled by the sounds of people screaming, glass breaking… You of all people know that this is the new normal. It’s honestly quieter now though, not so much widespread panic.  We now know how to respond better. 
Over the next year, the food chain for many animals became messed up, and eventually almost every animal either became extinct or desperately migrated somewhere where the vicious monsters didn’t live. Remember squirrels and chipmunks?  Haven’t seen one of those in awhile.  Those animals who did survive ended up taking an unintended road trip somewhere far away.  They had to be able to survive due to the absolute extremity of the climates they had to go to.  The birds had it the best.  They packed up and headed south.  With no more leaves or plants to eat, this pernicious and savage beast turned its blood thirsty eyes on…. us.  September 6th marked the day where the caterpillars first got a taste for human flesh. We, humans, not only now have a hugely reduced inventory of food from plants or animals. But well.... now we ARE food.  It became a rather grim situation.  Of course farmers and other scientists tried to create isolated greenhouses to farm separated from the beasts. There has been some success with this, but most of the time, the unrelenting caterpillars always found a way to be included, coming in as larvae on the bottoms of shoes or by stealthy  entering by blowing in the wind. It was hopeless.
Gypsy moth larvae typically lay their eggs and then climb to the tops of trees in search of light. They create silk tails from glands in their heads and continue to create silk trails as they move. The silk and their long hair propels them through the air like wings as the larvae travel. Each larvae can be carried for miles and miles as long as the wind keeps blowing them from tree to tree. With each group of eggs consisting of 600-800 insects, you can only guess (or well look outside) at how quickly this can become a nightmare. This past year, the temperature and winds were just right, so that on top of the mutation from The Enlargement, the caterpillars were spread every place around the world (most of which they had never been to before).
Now that you know all about the creature that is destroying my life, the lives of every other living organism on this planet, and well… your life too (unless you are a caterpillar who can read), let me tell you more about myself. I am (or at least was) your average 16 year old with long brown hair, freckles, and blue eyes. I enjoy English rock music, playing the clarinet in jazz band and I’m not too bad at tennis.  I never eat watermelon or wear high heeled shoes.  I hate caterpillars. No. Hate isn’t a strong enough word. Detest? Loath entirely, abhor, execrate, despise, contemn….. None of these words are strong enough for how much I don’t care for caterpillars.

“When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand”
When I was younger, I remember my mom reading me Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar every night before bed. I loved the story. I remember that sure, the main character was ugly, awkward, unsightly, and unpleasant to look at, but in the end the story had a very happy ending. The ugly caterpillar become a beautiful butterfly and lived happily ever after. But in this life… our new and very different life… there is no happy ending. Instead of eating things like apples, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, and other things that a caterpillar SHOULD eat (or even eating the “strange” things that Carle’s caterpillar ate like cake, ice cream, pickles, cheese, sausage, lollipops, pie, cupcakes, salami, and watermelon), the gypsy moths have ravaged and destroyed everything (Carle). They eat everything they can get their hands on, even humans. Little did I know, while I was sitting on my mother’s lap so many years ago, that the friendly, loveable character of my childhood, would come back as the evil villain to haunt, dominate and ultimately rule the world.
So, the caterpillars grew. And grew. And grew. And as their population got larger and larger, our population started to get smaller and smaller. People got sick and got sick fast. It started with a little rash, which eventually turned fatal. Doctors and scientists tried their best to keep up with a remedy.  But it didn’t work. It could be spread by touching someone’s skin, and was and far too dangerous to test on a dying person, because they could give it to you. Plus, if you were dying, you were DYING. So I don’t think you would happily be experimented on while dying from itchiness. The caterpillar’s saliva is poisonous, and with their mouths being as big as a melon, you can imagine why I have been wearing knee-high boots in the streets that are covered with their drool. The powder from the moth’s wings is also poisonous when inhaled. Countless people have died from choking to death from the powder.

“Relax
“I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?”
Anyway, Once Apon A Time, I, just like you, had a younger brother and two parents. Oh! And a guinea pig named Ham (he used to squeak when I rubbed his belly). One day, I came home after checking on my friend down the road, and I saw the door was wide open. When I walked inside, I heard that horrible sound and knew I would never see any of them again. I was too late. Crunch…. Crunch…. Crunch…. I have nightmares about that horrid day every night. There was nothing I could do. It was either I left or was eaten myself. So, I sprinted from my house screaming bloody hell. I had nowhere to go and nothing. Everything I owned but the clothes I was wearing was back at home. And there was no way I was going back there.

“Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
Well, I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again”
While I was crying and running away, I was stopped by a girl who looked about my age, and a younger boy. She asked me if I was ok. Ok??  How could anyone possibly be OK with the situation the world is in AND on top of it all my entire family was just EATEN by insects. The girl seemed to know what had happened before I even said anything. She introduced herself as Isabelle Hill, and the boy as Flinn McKee, her younger cousin.
“Hey, so, we are on our way to Boston to go to The Interviews. If you want, I mean, we would be happy for you to join us,¨ Isabelle said.
¨What are The Interviews?” I laughed. ¨How could anyone possibly be going to a job interview at this time?¨ It was comical.
Flinn said ¨It's not a JOB interview. The Interviews are the last and only hope of survival here on Earth. Haven’t you heard of them?¨ He gave a look to Isabelle that was a combination between humor and fear. ¨The world’s best scientists and engineers are creating four “colonies”- some on Earth, and one potentially in space. There will be on underwater in the ocean, one in Antarctica, one in Death Valley, and the last one will potentially be on the moon! All of these undesirable places are where gypsy moths can’t survive. But don't worry though. Humans can survive, which is why this is so great!¨
That was the moment when I realized how desperate and untied to anything I was. So, I decided to join these two nice, young strangers on a long walk to Boston for The Interviews, hoping that they would ensure my survival.
I am getting closer and closer to Boston. From the Tobin Bridge I can see the tall buildings ahead of me. And…  if I squint really really hard… I can kind of make the city look normal and not infested with the killer insects. I’m exhausted and using all my energy to keep putting one foot in front of another to the beat of Roger Waters’ lyrics from the 80’s. Did I mention I am a big fan of his music? Pink Floyd is my favorite band. Don’t judge. Isabelle, Flynn and I have hardly spoken as we wearily trudge along. I start mentally rehearsing what I’m going to say at The Interviews.  I need to be able to list my strengths and what I can contribute to a colony.  Let’s see:  I’m strong. I have perfect eyesight, and I’m pretty good at speaking French. I’m really good at memorizing stuff (It’s been three years since our family vacation to Gettysburg and I can still recite the Gettysburg Address from start to finish). I can’t stop imagining what The Colonies will be like? I mean… ANYTHING is better than life right now, so no matter what I will not complain. But then… what if I don’t get in? What would happen then?! I would be left to die alone?! Wait- not alone… I WOULD BE EATEN BY THE ******* CATERPILLARS!!!!!!! Munch… munch… munch… munch… munch… Kat is the best human we’ve eaten so far! Munch... munch... munch… Sorry if that seemed a little extreme, because it was not. After all I’ve been through, I NEED to get into The Colonies and survive. Remember how people used to joke around and say that something was a “life or death situation?” Well this is LITERALLY a life or death situation. Whatever The Interviewers decide is the fate of my life, and I’m not ready to accept no for an answer.

“There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying”
We don’t know exactly where in the entire city to go to find The Interviews. About every… hmmmm… 32.5 seconds almost on the dot, Isabelle, Flinn, and I have to club (with a baseball bat) to death a gypsy moth caterpillar. Once we get deeper into the city, I see a billboard with an arrow and a sign that says The Interviews. “I guess that’s where we should go?” laughed Flinn. I guess. For the rest of the way, we followed orange spraypainted arrows on the barren streets until an enormous tent appeared in the distance. Leading up to the tent was a line of thousands of people, who had apparently seen the advertisements for The Colonies too. Great. What if I don’t get in?
The line went by relatively quickly, thanks to the boatload of paperwork I had to fill out. Everything from my date of birth, social security number (hopefully they won’t abuse that…), parents, genetic diseases, blood type, skills, past accomplishments, etc was written down. Was it not for the people who had (I guess) been rejected that came storming out screaming from the tent, I actually felt somewhat safe for the first time in forever. As the line approached, I kept rehearsing what I would say. I would shake The Interviewer's’ hands, tell them my name, and calmly explain my significance and purpose. Wow, I hope I look alright. I haven’t slept well, or showered for days because I’ve been walking here. And I’m in floppy fisherman gear. I probably look like a goblin. Yeah. But then again, so does everyone else here right now. I am now inside the tent. The ground is covered in a thin layer of plywood, and there are curtains set up all around, I guess to block out The Interview rooms. I’m 3% scared, but 97% excited. Very, very, very excited. My future will be changed one way or another within the next few minutes.
.   .   .
A lady in a crisp military suit and heels clicks down a makeshift hallway between the curtains. “Katrina Moseby, please come in now. We are ready to see you.”
Deep Breath. Here I go.

“The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb”

Notes

All song lyrics come from Roger Waters’ Pink Floyd song ¨Comfortably Numb.¨
Waters, Roger. Comfortably Numb. Pink Floyd. Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie and Roger Waters, 1979. AZ Lyrics. Web. 24 May 2016. <http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pinkfloyd/comfortablynumb.html>.

Page 6: Carle, Eric. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. New York: Philomel, 1987. Print.

Pages 3, 4, and 7: Division of Lands and Forests, Forest Health Section. "Department of Environmental Conservation." Gypsy Moth. Gypsy Moth, n.d. Web. 24 May 2016. <http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/83118.html>.

Pages 4, 5, and 7: McManus, Michael L., David R. Houston, and William R. Wallner. "Gypsy Moth Handbook." Gypsy Moth Handbook. United States Department of Agriculture Combined Forest Pest Research and Development Program Home and Garden Bulletin, Aug. 1979. Web. 24 May 2016. <http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fhp/gm/online_info/gm/gmhb.htm>.