There is a chance the moth is still alive in its cocoon and I’m dumbfounded. It’s been more than sixty days of being in its enclosure. Maybe longer. It is no longer vibrating but I’m no longer picking it up and holding it in my hands to see if it’s vibrating so it has either lost its will to keep going and finish what it started or I have lost my will to keep going and finish what I started.
Much like the dying and or dead plants in the planters and the pots and my garden and the garbage, I do nothing but think about doing something and doing nothing. I feel nothing but guilt and also I feel nothing.
My fingers pace in step with my mind, as I search desperately for a sign of life or hope online. The results arrive before even hitting enter and I’m reminded of the imaginary and literal weight placed on mothers and time and the inability to last. How long does insinuates not forever and I’m suddenly sad over something that isn’t necessarily mine but that I’ve kept in an empty, plastic, lidless, pretzel bin as if that’s enough to sustain potential life.
The results are as telling as the search, with websites named pest-wiki, moth-prevention and even animals dot mom dot com all promising to answer “how long does a moth stay in a cocoon” while also managing to insult the ask just by their domain name.
I remember my son saying he was told by his wilderness camp leaders that it was possibly a luna moth so my research becomes more specific on the Actias luna and its time spent in a cocoon.
The urban ecology center dot org gives me hope because dot org feels credible and shares that “the days spent in the pupal phase depend on environmental conditions. Under normal weather conditions, the pupal phase can take around 2 weeks. During winter seasons the pupa may enter a state of dormancy and can take up to 9 months for it to come out of the cocoon as an adult Luna moth.” It is not the winter season but maybe it feels that way on the inside. In fact, I’m certain it feels that way on the inside.
(I also realize that I’m not sure I care or perhaps it makes no difference to me. I will keep the cocoon in its jar behind the sink waiting for it to have meaning like I do the wine corks and popsicle stick crafts and old photos and old memories and old relationships that are either dormant or already dead. They are useless but I can’t or don’t let them go because where do you place something when it’s no longer of use to you but it once was and still has emotion wrapped inside it?)
I don’t need to keep reading because the option of knowing I have upwards of six months of hope retained should be enough, but I do. My desperation over life becomes my desperation over death, as I learn the moth will live less than seven days as its final adult Luna moth stage. The moth will emerge with no mouth, no digestive system, no way of sustaining itself.
Perhaps that’s why it’s staying in the cocoon.
Maybe it’s not winter.
Maybe the unknown and uncertainty of the empty, plastic, lidless, pretzel bin is better than the alternative:
the end.