When I ran back with the camera, I found him like this...eating his old skin. I didn't know they did that. I can just picture him picking the last shreds off his toes while he hangs upside down from a window screen; "Mmmmm....tastes like chicken....hot and crunchy...I love summertime!"
Apparently, they regain calcium, as in bone-making material, from the skin. Besides, they'll eat almost anything that fits into those rapacious little mouths. I assume it tastes good to them.
It's too easy for me to discard my old skins, maybe every year, maybe even more often. I think we're meant for something better than living only in the moment; I think we're little microcosms of our creator, with awareness of past, present and future. Other big-brained mammals, less so perhaps. Reptiles, like our plentiful gators, strike me as voracious bundles of appetites and reflexes that live only in the moment. I don't want to be a gator.
If I keep my old skin, "eat" it somehow, I have memory of who I was. It's part of my story. It gives me a basis for victory and defeat. The gap between who I was and who I am gives me place for being a thankful man. Without that old skin, I have nothing to be thankful for but the vicissitudes of the moment.
This summer I read Mike Durant's book, In the Company of Heroes, about the US military mission in Somalia that led to the "Black Hawk Down" incident. After being shot down, captured, mobbed, beaten and eventually released, he had a year's worth (at least) of post-traumatic stress disorder. He received a letter from a cancer survivor that gave him some life-giving advice: "Look back, but don't stare."
Remember your old skin, and remember the journey. But you're more than your past.
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