Deleted Scenes From A Very Hungry Caterpillar

One Sunday morning, a tiny egg hatched and out popped a tiny caterpillar, who was very hungry.

On day two, she looked around for something to eat and found two apples. She ate through both of them and got a slight stomachache, but she was still hungry.

 

On day three, the very hungry caterpillar met another caterpillar on the leaf. Together, they ate through three plums and four berries before they came upon a bird, who was also very hungry. “What do you eat?” The very hungry caterpillar asked the bird, to which the bird responded, “caterpillars!” and snatched up her friend. The very hungry caterpillar was still hungry, but also suddenly aware of the fragility and insignificance of her own life.

On day four, the very hungry caterpillar was struggling to grasp the concept that bad things can randomly happen to caterpillars and nature’s response is indifference. If there is a higher power, they are not a benign god but a cruel and sadistic one that put her at the bottom of the food chain. Yet the thought that there is no higher power at all terrified her even more, for it meant that her low rank on the food chain is merely happenstance, which made her feel even more insignificant. These thoughts made her anxious, but more importantly, hungry. She ate through twelve lava cakes to ease her anxiety.

On day five, she had grown past her larval stage and into a pubescent young caterpillar. She walked down the halls of her new school, wishing the other caterpillars would notice her. Prom was coming up, and everyone else had a date but the very hungry caterpillar. A geeky, computer science-y caterpillar named Samuel worked up the courage to ask her, and since she didn’t want to miss out on Prom altogether, she reluctantly said yes. Still very hungry, she ate through a celebratory cheesecake that was part of her Prom-posal even though she had made it very clear she preferred chocolate.

 

On day six, the very hungry caterpillar was shopping for prom dresses, but the perfect dress just wouldn’t quite zip. “Excuse me,” she asked the shop employee. “Do you have this in a bigger size?” The employee looked her up and down, and turning up her nose, said “Sorry, that’s the largest we carry.” The very hungry caterpillar knew she needed to shed a few milligrams, but she was still hungry.

On day seven, the very hungry caterpillar graduated high school and started caterpillar college. She was snacking on a leaf with her new cool friend from the other side of the garden when he said, “Hey, you know you can eat this plant, but have you tried smoking it?” The two caterpillars smoked the leaf, leaving the very hungry caterpillar the hungriest she’d ever been. She ate through two apples, three slices of cake, one plum, and like eight plates of nachos. But she felt bad about how much she’d eaten, so she took a few caterpillar laxatives.

 

On day eight, the caterpillar was no longer small, and she was in fact a caterpillar college graduate. Everyone was pressuring her to build a cocoon and turn into a beautiful butterfly. She looked back on her life and all the delicious things she ate: the leaf, the cheesecake, apples, plums, the nachos. And she was like, “fuck everyone. Eating is my entire life’s purpose. I’m a fucking caterpillar.”

She built a cocoon house around herself and hung for two weeks. Then she nibbled a small hole, crawled out of her chrysalis, and…..

She was a moth!