CYPRESS, Texas — It's a sunny Tuesday afternoon at a park in Cypress Creek Lakes, but the playground is quiet. The splash pad is dry. The swings are empty.
The only sign of life flutters around the park's butterfly garden and inches along the flower beds below.
"There’s just a lot of cool [rocks] there," said 11-year-old Nicole McWilliam, who started a quarantine caterpillar with a few rocks and a sign inviting her neighbors to add to it.
Mom Lyn snapped a photo and shared it in the neighborhood Facebook group.
"At one point, there were maybe 10 rocks and we thought we were doing really well," Lyn laughed.
Big sis Alex also helped get the project going. Then the family watched their creation grow.
"Nicole’s goal was 100 rocks," said Lyn. "This morning, there were 638 with more still coming. It’s really amazing to see."
There's a little bit of everything: pops of color, message of hope, even some Astros pride.
"There was one with the NASA symbol and I thought that was really cool. That’s one of my favorites," Nicole said.
The family got the idea from a Facebook post in their hometown of Monifieth, Scotland, where neighbors started a similar caterpillar. Word of the Cypress one made it across the pond and into the headlines.
"They wrote an article on Nicole and the caterpillar, so she was on the front page of the newspaper in Scotland with her caterpillar," shared Lynn.
The effort is a way to connect to their friends back home and to their neighbors here.
"Every time we go past the park, there are so many people there just looking at the rocks," Nicole said.
That's why the caterpillar will just keep crawling along with a little guidance from the McWilliam clan.
"I’m really proud of my girls," said Lyn. "They’ve done such a good job."