My Silkworm Babies Became My Good Friends

Editor's note: Mingyong is a young writer in fifth grade who is very good at drawing and loves plants, insects and animals. He usually grows vegetables with his mother, and even teaches her how to use a computer to do homework. Because Facebook does not allow children under 13 to apply for an account, he borrowed his mother's account to submit his piece, writing about his experience of raising silkworm babies.

My Friends, the Silkworm Babies

Text / Photos by Chen Mingyong

I really like raising silkworms, because I love to watch, love to touch, and love to play with animals, and I want to be friends with them, because I am an animal myself, just a bit bigger. I like seeing them reproduce generation after generation, and every time I am forced to give away the animals I raise, I struggle and suffer inside.

I started raising silkworms last year, and I have already accumulated a lot of experience. I have found that if you raise just one or two, they grow very slowly, but if you raise more than ten at a time, they grow fast and grow well. There was once a time when I was in the farmland at my old home in Chiayi, squatting and watching my grandfather harvest. By accident I caught sight of a wild silkworm pupa on the ground, and I was both startled and delighted and took it home. By the next day, the pupa had turned into a dry shell, and on the ceiling there appeared a silkmoth half a thumb in size. Watching it slowly crawl down, I picked it up and put it back in the field, letting it go seek its own world.