One day, a little boy went outside with the hope of catching a butterfly. His shiny new butterfly net sparkled in the bright sunlight and the flowers in the field bobbed happily in the gentle breeze. There were many magnificent butterflies out that day, and the boy was having fun chasing them with his net, even if he didn’t catch them. Finally though, he caught up to one tiny little butterfly. This butterfly’s wings were too small and he couldn’t fly away as fast as his friends. So, the little boy snatched the poor creature out of the air and into his net.
“Gotcha!” cried the boy in delight.
The little butterfly was so scared that he hardly knew what to do. “What will you do to me?” he asked.
The boy hadn’t yet thought of what he was going to do with the butterfly once he caught one, but this seemed like a good idea to start devising a plan. After all, he was standing there with a butterfly in his net with nothing to do with it. Finally, he came to a conclusion. “I’ll put you in a jar and keep you there forever.”
“You shouldn’t put me in a jar forever,” said the butterfly.
“Why not?” asked the boy.
“Because I’ll die,” said the butterfly. “How would you like if I put you in a jar forever?”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed the boy. “You’re just a tiny little butterfly. You could never put me in a jar.”
So, the boy took the little butterfly home and put him in a jar. He set the jar on his bookcase—which was totally devoid of books—and soon forgot all about his little captive. There the butterfly stayed, getting weaker and weaker by the day, since the thoughtless boy hadn’t put anything in the jar for the butterfly to eat. It seemed certain that the butterfly would be doomed to die in this glass prison.
Then one day, the boy got angry at his mother for trying to force him to eat his vegetables. He was so furious that he stormed off to his room and slammed the door. When the door slammed, the bookcase shook and the jar fell to the ground. When it shattered against the floor and the butterfly realized that he was free, he mustered every ounce of strength he could and weakly fluttered out the window.
Finally free, the butterfly regained his strength by eating all the food he could find, and ensured his safety by flying as far away from the boy as he could. Soon, the butterfly found himself in a nuclear waste dump. There, he mutated and grew to the size of a bus. With his new size, the butterfly went back to pay the boy a visit. He knocked down the little boy’s house, trapped him in a huge net, and stuck him in a giant jar.
After about a day in the jar, the boy started to plead with the butterfly to let him out. “Okay,” said the boy, “I’ll never trap another butterfly in a jar as long as I live.”
“Of course you won’t,” said the butterfly. “Because you’ll be trapped in that jar for as long as you live, which shouldn’t be very much longer.”
“But aren’t you going to let me out now? I’ve learned my lesson!” said the boy in shock.
“I don’t care,” said the butterfly. He let out a hearty laugh and flew away. He left the boy there in that jar until the day that he finally died.
Moral: butterflies are vengeful creatures.