I invite you all to read my latest blog, in memory of my dear friend and second mother, Sherrie Carter, who passed away suddenly around the New Year. It is a story about a little green bug—and the woman who saved his life.
In the summer of 2018, Sherrie Carter had offered up her beautiful beach home on Buckroe Beach in Hampton, Virginia, as she frequently did, to a group of volunteers from the local VegFest for a pool party. That evening, as we laughed and said our goodbyes in the front parking lot, my eye caught a glinting green beetle struggling in a spider web—the predator with her menacing fangs just inches away, preparing to descend on her new meal.
I couldn’t take it, the horror of this feast. I swept in and scooped the little beetle out of harm’s way and gently set him down in the bushes, hoping the spider would find a new victim to sustain herself when I wasn’t there to witness it. I know—we shouldn’t interrupt nature, good, bad, or ugly—but that’s who I am. The suffering overcomes me.
Later that night, the beetle had somehow managed to climb all the way up onto Sherrie’s second-floor deck and was waiting for her with a broken wing, unable to fly. Of course, within moments, the beetle was in a Tupperware with a capful of water and some fruit in Sherrie’s kitchen, because that’s who Sherrie was: she couldn’t ever turn her back on a problem, or on someone in need.