Just as the sharp wailing sounded on the other side of the fence, I felt something soft brush against my dirt-caked fingers.

Hiding beneath the weeds I was pulling, a woolly bear had curled itself into a tight ball, bracing on instinct against a perceived threat.

What came next was instinct too, the most obvious move for a mother alert to the sound of a child in distress.
“Hey,” I shouted through the fence, over the sobbing. “I have something to show you!”

The sobs slowed to a whimper, and then I heard it. “Me?” came the question, punctuated by a hiccup.
“Hold on one second,” I called back, pulling the balled-up caterpillar from its defensive position in the dirt and tucking him carefully in one hand.

By the time I’d made my way through the gate and across the yard, the whimper had settled into sniffles, and when I proffered my open palm with the curled-up creature in its center, a squeal erupted.
“Can I hold him?” she asked, tear-stained face staring up at me, eyes hopeful.
“Of course,” I said. “Hold out your hand.”

Gently, I shifted the ball of orange and black from my palm to hers. At first, he lay there motionless, a spiky round lump, protecting his soft underbelly the only way he knew how. And then, slowly, he softened. The ball began to unroll. Tiny feet found their footing on a tiny palm, and he began to move, inching his way up the hand.

“It tickles,” she announced, the last of the tears forgotten.

We watched him make a slow, careful lap from her wrist to her elbow and back again. “Can I keep him?” she asked her mom, who’d been wrangling the family dogs when the wailing began.

Yes, her mom said. They’d research what woolly bears like to eat and give him a home in her insect habitat.

I let myself back through the gate and knelt in the same patch of dirt I’d left, the one directly beneath my daughter’s bedroom window. The room’s been empty since they went back to college.

Through the fence, I could hear her telling him all about his new home.