The girls, university exchange students from Poland and Japan, respectively, had been to my house and my parents' house for family gatherings and had done several activities with me.
Ola and Nagisa stood staring into the blossoms of a tree. I waved as I pulled up. "Whatcha doin', girls?"
They appeared frightened by something in the tree. I stepped out of my car to investigate.
They pointed cautiously to a web nest in the branches, crawling with bagworms.
Bagworms are caterpillars that literally spin a network of webbing into a tree, eventually growing and taking over as they eat the leaves. They are disgusting and predatory, but certainly not poisonous nor difficult to handle.
The girls were terrified of them.
I noticed they were gingerly tossing stones onto the nest to weight it down. The ritual continued as if I hadn't come across the scene. One would toss a stone, then the other. Some stones were lodged in the webbing; others adorned the grass below.
Being from the rural countryside often plagued by the pests, I casually picked up a stick and raked it across the web, bringing a sticky cluster of crawling critters with it. The girls fled before they could see what I was going to do. Their terror inspired me to pursue them with mock menace.
Waving the branch laden with the disgusting critters, I pretended to pursue them as they turned and shrieked in unison, their cries reverberating off the building behind them.
I laughed and tossed the mess on the ground. I picked up a bagworm and they chorused in caution again.
I held it out as if to say, "Look, it won't hurt you!"
I simply tossed it down when they didn't approach. I have four sons; I'm more accustomed to curiosity, not terror, over creepy crawlies.
Ola approached with caution, looked down at the bagworm on the sidewalk, and promptly eliminated it under her shoe. Nagisa came up behind her. As the shoe raised, both girls said, "Eww! Green!" commenting on the color of the bagworm's inner contents.
They kept a respectful distance, yet watched in interest as I scraped away the rest of the bagworms and dropped them in a nearby trash can.
Now that we had rid the earth of the predators, I offered another diversion: Driving my car.
Ola had taken the wheel once before, her first effort at driving, and had a passion for speed which had led her, us, and my poor car over a concrete parking block.
Nonetheless, I forgive such grievances with fatherly patience and was willing to offer not only Ola, but Nagisa, another driving virgin, the chance behind the wheel.
I drove them to a deserted street and Nagisa watched from the passenger seat as I showed her how to adjust the mirrors, push the brake, put the car in drive, and slowly release the brake and start steering. I went down the street and turned around in a cul-de-sac.
"Now it's your turn," I offered.
She took the driver's seat and was soon creeping down the lane at an alarming 5 miles per hour. I took the wheel from the passenger side from time to time to keep mailboxes, stray cats, parked cars, and the wrong side of the road safe and clear.
All in all, Nagisa enjoyed her first driving experience more than Ola did from the back seat.
(I'm not sure if it was the focus on a "pretty dog" or a "red bird I've never seen in Japan" instead of the attention to the driving that got to Ola, or if it was the forward thrust from the mashed down brakes that did it.)
All in all, it was a happy memory of three people from three different countries with one common friendship.
