When I identified this caterpillar in my books, it came to me that I had known and experienced its touch.  But it did not forcibly impress me until that instant that I knew it best of all, and that it was my childhood enemy of the corn.  Its habit was to feed on the young blades, and cling to them with all its might.  If I was playing Indian among the rows, or hunting an ear with especially long, fine ‘silk’ for a make-believe doll, or helping the cook select ears of Jersey Sweet to boil for dinner, and accidentally brushed one of these caterpillars with cheek or hand, I felt its burning sting long afterward.  So I disliked those caterpillars.

For I always had played among the corn.  Untold miles I have ridden the plough horses across the spring fields, where mellow mould rolled black from the shining shares, and the perfumed air made me feel so near flying that all I seemed to need was a high start to be able to sail with the sentinel blackbird, that perched on the big oak, and with one sharp ‘T’check!’ warned his feeding flock, surely and truly, whether a passing man carried a gun or a hoe.  Then came the planting, when bare feet loved the cool earth, and trotted over other untold miles, while little fingers carefully counted out seven grains from the store carried in my apron skirt, as I chanted: 

“One for the blackbird, one for the crow;
One for the cutworm and four to grow.”

Then father covered them to the right depth, and stamped each hill with the flat of the hoe, while we talked of golden corn bread, and slices of mush, fried to a crisp brown that cook would make in the fall.  We had to plant enough more to feed all the horses, cattle, pigs, turkeys, geese, and chickens, during the long winter, even if the sun grew uncomfortably warm, and the dinner bell was slow about ringing.

Then there were the Indian days in the field, when a fallen eagle feather stuck in a braid, and some pokeberry juice on the face, transformed me into the Indian Big Foot, and I fled down green aisles of the corn before the wrath of the mighty Adam Poe.  At times Big Foot grew tired fleeing, and said so in remarkably distinct English, and then to keep the game going, my sister Ada, who played Adam Poe, had to turn and do the fleeing or be tomahawked with a stick.

When the milk was in the ears, they were delicious steamed over salted water, or better yet roasted before coals at the front of qthe cooking stove, and eaten with butter and salt, if you have missed the flavour of it in that form, really you never have known corn!

Next came the cutting days.  These were after all the caterpillars had climbed down, and travelled across the fence to spin their cocoons among the leaves of the woods; as if some instinct warned them that they would be ploughed up too early to emerge, if they remained in the field.  The boys bent four hills, lashed the tassels together for a foundation, and then with one sweep of their knives, they cut a hill at a time, and stacked it in large shocks, that lined the field like rows of sentinels, guarding the gold of pumpkin and squash lying all around.  While the shocks were drying, the squirrels, crows, and quail took possession, and fattened their sides against snow time.