Last night, I had a horrible nightmare, of the sort that I haven't had since I was a little kid, and it still has me rattled.

Maybe some background is in order here; when I was a kid -- about five years old -- I got a "bug jar" for my birthday. I was fascinated by nature; I thought that National Geographic specials were the best thing on TV, after Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom". (I also had a bit of a crush on Marlon Perkins, but only because he was my Granddad's age and got to play with tigers and otters.) Anyway, the jar wasn't meant for long-term habitation; I used it to catch fireflies so I could see them up close, butterflies on occasion (I'd put a flower in the jar and let them fly in); even a praying mantis once. I'd look at them for an hour or so, watch them explore the inside of the enclosure, get a close look at them, and let them go. I never wanted to keep them for long; I understood that they were wild creatures and needed to be free. I felt privileged to have their company for a bit, and wouldn't let my cousin David -- who had a bit of a destructive streak at that age -- hurt or torment them while they were captive.

One afternoon, I found a Cecropia moth, or robin moth, on the back fence. It's highly unusual to see them during the day, because they're a nocturnal species. I ws astounded at the size of this creature; the moth had a six-inch wingspan and bright red and white banding on the body. It was the biggest winged thing I had ever seen that didn't have feathers. I gently got it into the jar, and proceeded to observe it.

About this time, my Mamaw, who was normally a font of good sense, saw my strange visitor, and decided that I "needed" to start a butterfly collection, starting with the moth. I argued with her; I wanted to let it go, but I hadn't quite developed the iron streak that runs in the women of my family. She wouldn't hear of it, and kept me from releasing it several times.

The problem was that Mamaw had only the vaguest notion of how butterfly collections are started, and knew nothing of the infamous "killing jar". My formerly innocent toy took a darker turn as the moth was held captive for the next two weeks.

I learned three things during this time: first, that an agitated moth will beat its wings constantly, and in a species this big, that is no small thing. The constant flutter drumming against the plastic of the jar seemed to follow me wherever I went. Second, I learned that this moth was female, as she started to lay eggs after a week. Mamaw transferred her to a shoebox while I was visiting my Granddad and Grandmama; the beating of her wings against the cardboard was not an improvement. Third, Cecropia moths live for about two weeks. She must have just emerged from her cocoon and completed mating the day before I found her.

For two weeks, the sound of her wings invaded my dreams, and I had nightmares about being surrounded by nine-foot tall moths, in an upright circle, beating at me with their wings. They were all facing inward, hovering vertically, reproach in their eyes and attitudes. After a couple of nights of this, I was afraid to release the moth; convinced that she would try and kill me for allowing this to happen, for doing this to her. Two weeks of the sound of her desperate wings during the day, and nightmares all night.

She died while I was out of the house, not outside where she belonged, but trapped in the darkened confines of a box. Mamaw, making good on her promise, mounted her on a piece of cardboard. In a bizarre twist, the pin she selected was one of her sewing pins, and the head was almost the exact same shade of yellow as the eggs the moth had laid. I hated looking at the display.

The night the moth died, I had my last nightmare. The moths that had surrounded me were dead; lying on their backs, wings spread and eyes dulled, in a circle around me. I was free to go, Yet, I knew that as I stepped out of the circle, if I so much as brushed one of their wings for the briefest moment, the most minute instant of contact, they would come back to life, and kill me.

From that day forward, I've been scared of moths.

I was convinced as a child that all of them knew what I had done, and were just waiting for their moment. Miller moths provoked the worst reaction; I was convinced that they would fly up my nose and suffocate me. Butterflies didn't scare me; my childish logic was that their wings folded upwards rather than backwards, and therefore they couldn't fly up my nose. Still, it was years before I was comfortable around them. Grasshoppers in flight also scare me; their wings make almost exactly the same whirring noise that haunted my days so long ago.

Last night's nightmare was about being trapped in my bedroom by Cecropia moths. Dumb? Maybe, but it went straight to the five-year-old part of my brain and held on. Especially since that was the first dream I've had involving them since I was five, making it all the worse somehow.

It's also no surprise that one of my favorite Buffy episodes is "Nightmares". The scene where Wendell explains about his recurring dream about the spiders resonates deeply with me.

Now, how do feline antics come into this? As I was pouring the details of my dream into an e-mail, Panther attacked a picture across the room to get at something behind it. That something apparently turned out to be a moth; not a Cecropia, thank Excolo (to borrow a phrase from Indicolite), or I'd be about six counties away by now, barefoot and heading northeast at warp speed. But a largish one nonetheless, which has since fluttered out of sight.

Is it any wonder that I'm still wide awake?