It was the summer after kindergarten. Laws sat on his parent's patio, legs askew, with twigs and crushed rocks and magnifying glasses scattered about. At the moment he was captivated by a stem in his hands from one of his mother's tomato plants, and the giant caterpillar clinging to it and eating one of the leaves.
Laws wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. He had an image of the future. Third grade. He would wander the halls of knowledge with his fellow classmates, all dressed in white lab coats and carrying clipboards, comparing the results of their research. Collaborating with colleagues. Third grade would be grand.
The caterpillar, three inches long and as thick as an old man's finger, was a tomato hornworm. It had a red barb on the back, the "horn". (No purpose that Laws knew of other than to scare away predators. But he still wasn't going to risk touching it.) The hornworm was green. It had tiny yellow-and-black breathing holes above the legs. Its legs were really pseudopods, soft green outgrowths of its bulbous body that it used to cling to the stem. Its true legs (six, being an insect) were sharp little brown claws at the front by its mouth. The six claws directed the leaf it was eating into its mouth. The mouth was working away steadily, clomp clomp clomp clomp, leaving a row of little round bites out of the leaf. Its mouth opened vertically. That made sense, since the leaves it ate were also held vertically. Once it had scrunched down as far as it could by chewing its way along the leaf, it would reach up and grab the leaf again at the top and start on another row of chomps.
Chuck, Emily, and Scott came around, with Mimsy trailing behind. "What you got there, Laws?" asked Chuck.
Laws looked up. "It's a tomato hornworm!" he said proudly. He held it up, showing off his caterpillar. "See, it's eating little rows out of this leaf."
"Let me see," said Chuck. Laws handed it to him. Chuck took it, looking at the caterpillar. Then he turned to Emily and shoved it in her face. "Want a caterpillar?" he teased.
"EW!" said Emily, batting it away. The stem and caterpillar went flying into the bushes.
"Don't do that!" said Laws. "You'll hurt it!"
"Oh no!" said Chuck, fetching the caterpillar. "Look, it's hurt! We're going to have to put it out of its misery!"
Laws didn't like this at all. But he looked at the caterpillar, and it was indeed hurt. A gash in its side. It was likely Chuck was actually right, that it was hurt bad enough that it would just die now slowly if it were left alone. Laws started crying. This was really unfair.
"I'm going to run over it with my bicycle," said Chuck, taking the caterpillar out to the street. "That will put it out of its misery for you."
"But," cried Laws.
"You don't want it to suffer, do you?"
"But"
Chuck put it on the street, then got on his bicycle. Laws watched, no idea how to improve the situation. Chuck ran over it. It left a big dark green splotch on the street. "There! I took care of it for you!"
Laws went back to his house, but went inside instead, and cried because the neighborhood kids were so mean.
But, thought Laws, if you think about it, it was really his own fault. He was the one who had found the hornworm and gave it to Chuck. If Laws hadn't been involved, that hornworm would still be alive today, chomping away on the tomato plant.
His mother didn't like hornworms. They ate her garden. She liked most insects, but not hornworms. She'd approve of getting rid of them. But Laws didn't care about that, he liked hornworms anyhow. (And, truth be told, he was rather ambivalent about tomatoes.)
The next day Laws was back on the patio. There was a preying mantis in the bush, slowly, slowly creeping up on a grasshopper. Laws had seen this before. Fast movement would make the grasshopper jump, but slow enough movement wouldn't trigger it. If the mantis could get close enough, it would pounce and bite a chunk out of the grasshopper's neck, paralyzing it, then it would each the rest of the grasshopper at its leisure. So far the mantis was attempting to sneak close enough.
Chuck and Emily and the others came around again. "Hey Laws! What are you looking at now?"
Laws looked about. He saw his favorite granite rock for pounding other rocks, no not that, he saw a sandstone rock next to it. "I was looking at this rock," he said, picking up the sandstone. "It was part of a beach once. There might be fossils in it," said Laws, ad libbing. Sandstone really wasn't good hunting grounds for fossils.
Chuck took the sandstone. "We should put it back in the water then! Here Emily, you take it!" Chuck gave it to Emily.
Laws frowned, in what he hoped was a disappointed-looking look.
"What do I want a rock for?" asked Emily. She tossed it in the bushes. "Let's go do something else!" She and the others all left.
When they were safely gone, Laws looked back at the mantis. It had caught the grasshopper and was now holding it between its claws, chomping away. The grasshopper's wings stuck out at odd angles.
Laws was impressed at how that had gone. That worked, he thought. My fellow humans are barbarians. But they can't see on their own. They can only see if I see for them. If I just pretend not to see, then the things I love will stay safe.
Chuck was probably in third grade. Laws couldn't really imagine him in a lab coat. Well he could. But not actually collaborating with colleagues. Usefully, that is. Perhaps his image of the future wasn't quite accurate.
It's "praying mantis", not "preying mantis". Laws is aware of both spellings and both meanings. Laws may be in kindergarten, but he also reads dictionaries for fun. He's not sure which spelling is correct in this case, but he feels "preying mantis" is more accurate. I went with his spelling.