The Cocoon

I woke up in the morning, and made a cup of coffee. I looked out my window and, after a moment of hesitation, decided to see what they were doing again.

I sat down on the ground not far from them. They were at it again. I sipped from my cup. The morning was mostly still, but the sight still made me uneasy. Another ant made its way past the others, adding yet another piece to it.

Whatever else the ants were doing, nothing else seemed all that interesting. All I could do was stare at the thing they were creating.

A cocoon. Giant, bigger than any of them. Yet unfinished. But every day, they labored on it. Piece after piece was added. Why were they doing it? Some of the ants had started trying to block the path of another ant, who was carrying another piece of the cocoon. But the resistance by the few ants was soon overwhelmed by the others. And yet another piece was added.

At first, I hadn’t been able to tell what they were building, except that it was big. But the shape had revealed itself over time. But what was it? What was the cocoon for? The sunlight hit the cocoon, and I squinted. It could be a trick of the light, but I thought I saw something that I hadn’t seen before. Some kind of great shape within, but too dim to make out what it was. But still… it was a shape.

I remembered what I had heard about cocoons as a kid. Metamorphosis. How beautiful it was. A wonder of nature. The caterpillar dreamt of flying, so it prepared a cocoon, nestling itself within it. And waited. And then it transformed into a gorgeous and wondrous butterfly, finally free. Finally, its dreams could come true.

But this was a story. What no one told me as a kid is that the cocoon was a wonderful thing for the butterfly, but a terrible thing for the caterpillar. The caterpillar gets killed, its entire body turned into a liquid goo, which the butterfly would grow out of.

This troubled me. Did the ants even know what they were doing? Was this part of some plan? Or was this some kind of strange result of a much greater process? And what on Earth was going to come out of that cocoon one day? A predator? Some kind of prey? An ant? Still, the ants kept laboring. I took another sip of coffee. As the sun rose higher, I felt a sense of excitement and foreboding. One of these days, maybe even tomorrow, I would find out.