EVERYTHING IS IN THE FRAMING

The caterpillar cuts a path of pure devastation through the ecosystem it is born into. It consumes everything it can find, eating hundreds of times its weight each day. Along with a million of its kin, the caterpillar will blissfully denude every branch of every tree it is able in a personal act tantamount to clear-cutting.

The caterpillar and all of its species enact this collective ecocide until their vulgar obesity is so severe they can hardly move – at which point each one hangs itself.

As this is taking place, immobilized and swinging from their selected gallows, a war of attrition rages inside each creature. The battle is between the caterpillar and something wholly other. The genome of a distinct and alien butterfly had been hiding inside this whole time, like a sleeper cell, hidden and silent, laying in wait. But the butterfly genome does eventually awaken. And when it does so the 'fly begins its foul work. The caterpillar's immune system responds by going into overdrive, reacting as aggressively as it possibly can to this devastating internal threat.

And every time this story plays out the caterpillar dies its inevitable death. Under maximal stress, it becomes completely overwhelmed, liquified and devoured by the parasitic butterfly.