The Week of W(h)it: Moth Protomorphosis Disease

The Week of W(h)it is a collection of funny stories about my friend Whitney Hardie and the people she knows. Whitney's mother recently died and this project is a way to help her grieve through humor. 

In June 2007, after taking Caleb to work for the day, I got in a near collision with a driver turning left in front of me. I was so shaken, as it was pretty much my first ever disaster like that, so I called into work, saying I'd be there a bit later.

I called Caleb and told him the news; we talked online for awhile before he said, "So, what if we moved into Apt. 424 today?" This apartment was in our quad of the BYU Student Housing, so we would still know our neighbors.

I thought it was harmless, because there was no way that Caleb would move right before our California trip AND when we were both working the next day. Unfortunately, I called his bluff and before we knew it, we had a key to our new place and two days to move everything and clean the old apartment.

Wow. What? No.

But, it all happened. I mean, our stuff in the new place was semi-chaotic and we had basically exhausted ourselves, which is a completely smart thing to do right before a big road trip.

Wow. What? No.

A story that came from all this moving is the terrible tale of the Moth disease.

We had just finished cleaning the old apartment. I was carrying Caleb's suit on its hanger and rolling our suitcase along in the blackened night.

When suddenly, from the left, a large moth flew into my left eye and slashed my retina to disable me. After that was so deftly done, he barrel-rolled into my cornea and then bit the skin below my eye to poison me.

I did a bend-backy Matrix move and dropped the suitcase, scooping the moth from inside my eye and throwing him across the quad. Immediately, I called out for Caleb, who was walking pretty far ahead of me. No avail. He did not hear me.

And for a couple weeks after the attack, it was numb where the moth bit me and when I blinked, a sharp pain coursed through my face. I had been semi-permanently disabled by a two-inch moth.

Was it deadly?

We're still waiting to see. Four years later.

But I still pull that Matrix move any time I see a moth come near me.