04 October 2010

Chrysalis

Caterpillars climb our white exterior walls like they are horizontal and stay motionless for days or a second. When they move on, we see a pile of small yellow eggs that stick for twenty rains and hatch whenever we aren't looking. Sometimes the eggs are broken and eaten by a fat black spider, or just don't hatch at all.
A caterpillar lay by our door for days, and never moved. Now there is a green form, where it sleeps. Sometime it will emerge, ordinary as waking from a nap. But this time it will have wings.


Do you find it odd that the chrysalis is so uniform? Each raised bump and ridge is a duplicate of its siblings'. The shape itself is odd, like a bug at rest with furled wing. But each bump and ridge must have a purpose, must fit one toe, or a leg, else why would they exist? It is perfectly efficient, nothing wasted and no space or ornament there if unrequired.
Either God was a genius who created every single thing on earth, in our solar system, everywhere, perfectly efficiently, first try, in seven days...or...evolution smoothed some bumps and raised others so the caterpillar would fit perfectly, uniformly, in its infancy and adulthood, exactly into a chrysalis that it was born with the knowledge of how to construct.

1 comment:

Melissa Amateis said...

I'd say God made everything perfect on the first try - and those seven days weren't 24-hours apiece, but perhaps millions of years. I like to try and fit the science and my faith together. ;-)