Denny’s father is a collector of wildlife and his trophies consist of ibex, chamois, and eland. In an effort to follow in his father’s footsteps, Denny also collects his own wildlife trophies, but finds interest in butterflies and moths. Denny pins them on the wall of the playroom in the house, where they leave oil marks on the wallpaper and reek to the point of nausea. Despite the stench that accumulates in his playroom, Denny refuses to open the windows in an attempt to preserve his treasures.  One day, Denny finds a strange specimen among the leaves of a sassafras with wrinkled skin and tiny claws, almost like a "shriveled dragon." Denny becomes obsessive and locks his room up, even preventing the servant girl, Ethel, from entering his room to clean. For months, Denny waits for the creature to emerge from its cocoon. Finally, the day comes, and Denny witnesses the creature’s metamorphosis. Once it ends, Denny reluctantly leaves the room to have lunch with his dad where they converse about Denny’s mother who apparently is legally banned from contacting him. After lunch, Denny returns to his room and frantically looks for a jar big enough to hold the specimen before someone else sees it. He stuffs the moth in a jar full of cyanide and watches the life fade away before pinning the creature to his wall.  Several days later, Denny hears a beating on his window in the middle of the night. He looks outside but finds nothing and goes back to bed. The next night, the creature pinned on his wall begins to emit an awful stench and something sticky crawls, half-flies into his mouth in the middle of the night, causing him to panic. The beating on the window in the middle of the night continues to disturb Denny until he tries to escape his room in fear. However, the door pushes open from the other side and prevents him from escaping. The next day, Ethel finds Denny’s dead body on the floor with scars and a strange filaments wrapped around his face.