Just like the butterfly series which I had posted 4 years ago ( I just checked the date and I cant myself believe, as the experience is just in front of my eyes , it feels like it happened like just a few months back), this season I have come up with the narration of the silkworm story, never in my life had I expected that I will have to raise silkworms, and will have to eventually kill them to extract silk at the end of the process. being someone who suggests vegan silk to random people while they talk about the "silk saree supremacy" I had to take this up for my successful course completion.
So, our
college offers this SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC), where I opted for
APICULTURE last semester and this semester in SEC zoology we had SERICULTURE.
And yes, we had to rear silkworms!
(Picture taken while extracting silk, the tea cup has boiling water where the cocoon is soaked)
Despite we
all knew the fact that we were going to kill the worms towards the end of the
process, we still fed it with so much love and care. Of course the mulberry leaf
plucking duty seemed to be a tiresome job yet we had no other option as feeding
was essential at the end of the day, some felt it disgusting, some others literally
became mothers of their worms, despite providing so much care in the form of
food-the only way we knew (1. feeding more of mulberry leaves, 2. chopping them
smaller for their ease in feeding). And mothering them by small acts like
adoring them while they drank water etc. Flexing the rearing tray in front of
other course (non –science students) and explaining them the whole idea, and at
the end seeing all of them die in front of our eyes infected by diseases the
whole journey was a life time experience, after all not many people get to
raise silkworms, and the experience was unique. Let me narrate
the whole story episode by episode in this blog series-THE SILKWORM STORY.
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