Fall and baby caterpillars

Fall is here and as the title of one of the books in my classrooms says, "Fall is Not Easy". Lately the little ones have been coming back in from recess with cold noses and cold hands. We have a cocoon in our classroom that was given to us by another teacher the first week of school. It's in this little jar with some leaves and grass. After a while it started making scritching and scratching noises inside the coccon like it was trying to get out. But then it stoped making noises at all. I thought, "we have killed this creature, how am I going to tell the children?" So I made a big speech about how sometimes baby caperpillars die. There were solem faces and droopy eyes. So then I said, "how about we break open the coocoon and see what's inside?" (which I really had been dying to do). This seemed to cheer them up a little. So I reached down inside of the jar to get the cocoon from the leaf. And that's when I heard a little ... faint ... weak ... "scritch, scritch" from the inside of the cocoon. I think moths know when they are about to throw in the towel. Either that or God was trying to save me from a major educational nightmare. I can just imagine me opening the cooccon and the little creature writhing inside, plainly alive, for all five year olds to see. I would have become a murderer of baby caterpillars in thier eyes. A torturer of the weak and small. Thank you God (and baby caterpillar)!