I'm going to share a very old story with the Authorsden World that I've kept to myself for 50 years. I was living in West Virginia with my family when I was 3 and 4 years old. My father taught at the local University and my mom was a homemaker taking care of three little girls, a dog, and a shitload of puppies. I followed my mother to the back of the yard one day, to the woodshed, and there she pried up most of the boards to reveal the tiny pink pups. Since there were 9, it was fascinating to watch the dogs breastfeed. But I was more interested in the woodshed and the world beyond. Adults had told me not to go into the woods or even to go and look at the woodshed. So one morning, I left the house and walked across the yard to the woodshed. There were no new puppies to discover. I looked deeper into the woods and began to take steps further and further in. My footsteps crunched and snapped on grasses, twigs, leaves, dirt, and larger branches. There were dead trees on the ground, some with masses of "tree fungus" growing on them. As I walked deeper into the woods, I saw that there were "sacks" hanging from the branches of almost every tree. I was intensely curious but didn't know what to do. I was beside myself. What was in these sacs? There were so many. Finally, I got the nerve to poke my finger into one of them. Out poured hundreds of thousands of baby bugs!! Larva. Would they have transformed into different creatures had I not violated their abode? I was so sickened by these worms that I walked very briskly all the way back to the woodshed and home. No one knew I had left the house. And now that I am 50 years old, I am divulging this story. I don't know why I've never wanted to relate it to anyone before. It was my own private adventure, and I didn't want to share it.