“C’mon Rufus. This way.” I said. “This way” means “not that way” to The Boys. We were enjoying the afternoon walking down the old tank road that stretched between the German cities of Vaihingen and Boeblingen. It’s made of cobblestone, and the forest is taking back the sides of it in some areas. The sky had begun to cloud over and the temperature was cooler than it had been earlier, but not so much that I felt uncomfortable in my shorts and t-shirt. However, we had walked for over an hour already and The Boys were getting tired.

As we continued down the road, I noticed a moth sitting on it. It was a sandy colored moth with markings that resembled the Nike symbol on each of its four wings. I bent down to look at it and take its picture. Since it was in the road, I let it climb onto my finger to put it in a safer place among the trees. It wasn’t afraid in the least. “Why are you sitting in the road?” I asked it expecting a come back with some witty answer. Max came up quickly to see what I had discovered, and after sniffing it, decided it was not worth any more of his attention. Rufus had already made the decision to stay where he was and sat down. I took a couple more pictures of the moth while it sat on my finger, and then moved into the forest. As I tried to move him to a leaf, he climbed a bit higher on my finger. It seemed he didn’t want to leave me. So, in a soft voice, I began to convince him that it would be better for him to move to place where he might be able to eat something. “Don’t you think a leaf or tree would be a bit more natural for you?” He didn’t move. After a few minutes and some gentle persuasion, I moved him to a leaf. He didn’t seem too comfortable, and then the leaf flipped over. I let him climb back on my finger. I was a bit perplexed at this point. I couldn’t imagine why a moth would not want to sit on a leaf. Don’t they eat leaves? Then I moved over to a tree. He REALLY wouldn’t go there. Then I went to a mossy patch of ground and thought, as nice as it looked, any moth would be happy to rest there. I set him down onto the dry moss, and talked to him a bit. Then all of sudden his wings went straight up, and he began to fall over. I didn’t know what to do next, but there wasn’t much else to I could do. The small, sandy-colored moth with the Nike emblem on it then fell over and died. I was a little saddened, but then realized that he was able to spend his final moments on Earth in the company of someone who cared enough to carry him a few feet from a road and place him back in a quiet little part of the forest where he belonged.