Charlie the Caterpillar led a normal life, living on a bush with his brothers and sisters, spending each day eating juicy green leaves. 

He would wake up in the morning and head out to the end of a branch and get stuck into chomping his way through a nice juicy leaf for breakfast. He would continue onto lunchtime and then find a completely new juicy leaf, just to make a difference, and then keep going right the way up to dinner time, at which point he would find another leaf which he could then enjoy up until bedtime. He would settle down to a nice restful sleep along with his other brothers and sisters having made a nice leafy nest out of silken thread, dreaming about the next day in which he could eat more juicy leaves. What better life could there possibly be other than tucking into nice juicy leaves every single day.

One morning, he woke up and things felt different. For a start, he didn’t feel at all hungry which is most unusual for a hungry caterpillar. He wriggled his way to the end of a branch and bit into a leaf, it tasted different. He thought he should try another leaf so he wriggled towards another branch and bit into another leaf, this one didn’t taste right at all. He wriggled his way slowly from one branch to another climbing higher and higher up the bush trying out different leaves but nothing felt the same as it had before. The day was drawing to a close and Charlie felt tired, in fact more tired than he had ever felt before after all that climbing up the bush. As he had done so often, he weaved himself a nest out of silken thread and fell into a deep sleep, deeper than he had ever done before.
He slept and he slept and he slept.

The sun was shining when he awakened and as he stretched and pushed his way of his little nest, it was a bit tighter and needed a bit more effort to get out of today.  He looked down to see a completely shiny brightly coloured new suit covering his entire body. Not only that, he now had two huge wings which he could flap backwards and forwards. He had seen other strange creatures with brightly coloured wings before flying around but now he looked the same as them. Maybe he could fly too he wondered.  So he crawled to the very top of the bush where a sudden gust of wind picked him up and he began flapping and fluttering into the sky above.  What was this marvellous event that had suddenly given him wings and the ability to fly. After all he was just a caterpillar. The world he once knew as being just a bush had suddenly opened up to being so much more.

Charlie looked down and recognised the bush far below him amongst so many other bushes. He could see his brothers and sisters happily going about their daily business of chomping on the green leaves. He flew down and landed on the bush.

“Hey everybody, good to see you all, I’m back. Did you miss me?” – he said excitedly.

One of the caterpillars stopped eating for a moment, raised its head and replied – “Who are you? What are you doing on our bush?” The Others all murmured grunts of dissatisfaction through their leaf filled mouths.

“I’m one of you”, he gasped, “I’m Charlie. You’re my brothers and sisters “.

“You’re not Charlie” said another of the caterpillars, “he looks like we do. You can’t be one of us, you got wings sticking out your back and pointy things on the top of your head. Go away and leave us alone.”

Charlie looked surprised at their response and then realised what they referring to.
“Oh these”, he said, “well, I woke up and wasn’t hungry so I decided to climb up to the top of the Bush…..”
but before he finished his sentence, he was interrupted.

“NO ONE goes to the top of the Bush”, said another caterpillar in a menacing voice, “far toooooo dangerous. That’s where the birds live.
“Yeah”, said another, “and the wasps that carry us off. Too dangerous to go up there”.

“Well I did”, said Charlie indignantly, “and I found a place to sleep because I was really tired and when I woke up, this is what I looked like, I don’t really know but something happened to me, I can’t really explain it , but now I can fly and I can move from one place to another without having to use my legs and I don’t even need to eat leaves anymore!”

“How can you be one of us if you don’t eat leaves” – they all mumbled in agreement.

“Go away”, they said in unison, “you are not one of us, you are probably just trying to lure us up to the top of the Bush so that more of your winged friends can carry us off and eat us”.
“Go away and leave us to our nice juicy leaves. We don’t believe you and we certainly don’t want to listen to what you have to say”.
They turned their collective caterpillar backs on him and went back to chomping on their leaves.

The life that Charlie had known was gone, there was no going back, nothing to return to even if wanted to. He was in a different place now and there was no point in trying to convince those that once knew him, of the journey he had been through. They just couldn’t understand how he had become what he now was. They would just have to find out for themselves one day when they too would go looking for a place at the top of the Bush.

So Charlie settled into his new life as a butterfly flying from one bright coloured flower to another, meeting and chatting with the other butterflies whilst drinking delicious cocktails of nectar.

Who would have thought that a hungry caterpillar who liked nothing more than chomping on green leaves would one day be flying around the sky as a butterfly.

And the Moral of the Story is:
Remember, you can’t talk like a butterfly to a caterpillar.