George the Woolly Caterpillar's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

George crawled down from the log at first light. Twenty-two names sat safe on Lannie's shelf. Twenty-six blank strips waited beside them, each one a plant he had already chewed but could no longer name. The valley spread below him in wet folds of green, hundreds of leaves shining after the rain. He had to retaste the missing ones without wasting a bite on plants he'd already crossed off. If he chewed the same leaf twice, he'd never know. Another rain was coming. He could smell it in the wind off the hills. He was pushing through a patch of clover when a grasshopper landed beside him, folding long green legs. "You're the counting one," the grasshopper said. "I've watched you. Fern by the root. Mint by the stones. Thistle near the anthill." George stopped chewing. The grasshopper had followed him for weeks out of boredom and remembered every stop. George waved his front legs at the smudged strips he carried. The grasshopper leaned close. "Read them to me," George said, tapping the ones still legible. The grasshopper read: nettle, clover, thistle, mint, and twenty more. Then George pointed at the blanks. "Those," he said. The grasshopper thought, antennae twitching. "Sorrel. Yarrow. The little yellow one by the flat rock. The bitter vine. The fuzzy round one near the beetle log." He named them one by one, twenty-six in all, until every blank strip had a plant attached to it in the grasshopper's memory. George couldn't write yet. But he could crawl straight to each plant and chew the name at the log before the next rain. They worked through the morning. The grasshopper hopped ahead and pointed with one leg. George climbed, bit a fresh leaf as proof, and carried the strip back to Lannie's door in his jaws. Lannie filed each one as George chewed. By afternoon, forty-eight slots stood filled. The grasshopper perched on the log's roof, cleaning his face with a foreleg. "Hundreds more down there," he said, nodding at the valley. "You'll want a witness for those too." George looked at the green folds stretching to the far ridge. He had lost nothing. He had gained a set of eyes that remembered what his bark could not. The rain could come now. The old list was safe, and the new plants were waiting.