There are animal lovers and then there is this dude from the United Kingdom.

Sam Darlaston planned to have broccoli for dinner but after finding a small green caterpillar curled up inside, he decided to keep it and care for it.

According to Insider, the 27-year-old TV and radio presenter didn’t want to throw the caterpillar out so, he kept it as a pet instead.

Learning about how to care for caterpillars on WikiHow, Darlaston carefully kept his new green friend inside a Tupperware.

"I followed the instructions and put it in a Tupperware with holes in the top," he said.

"My housemates were really on board and we named him Cedric. We were kind of excited and weirded out, all at the same time,” he told Insider.

Cedric, an instant friend

He posted a video of Cedric on Twitter and even got a refund from Tesco for the caterpillar infested broccoli.

Darlaston then went out to buy more broccoli with the refund but – you guessed it – he found more caterpillars instead.

So then Cedric gained six friends – Broc, Olly, Croc, Janine, Carlos and Slim Eric.

The journey of the seven caterpillars were then documented by Darlaston on Twitter gaining a lot of attention from netizens.

"All of a sudden we had these things wiggling around and we just became really obsessed with them.

"We named them, we'd get them out and let them walk around. This is lockdown, you gotta do what you can to keep occupied!" he said.

When the babies grew up

Things got even more exciting when the caterpillars entered the transition stage of metamorphosis just a few days later.

Cedric was the first to change.

"It was really amazing, but also quite shocking at first.

"When the first one cocooned, I was like, is it dead?"

"Cedric, the oldest, he was there cocooning. Once that happened with him, I understood what was happening with the rest of them."

By June 22, six of the seven caterpillars had become cocoons except for Broc.

"It was cool cause they were all doing it in different stages.”

The full transition

On June 21, Cedric emerged as a butterfly. How cool is that!

"It was quite sad!" Darlaston said. "But I'm just happy now that they've all survived it. It was 18 days, and I wanna do it all again."

"The most interesting thing about me is gone now!" he said.

What a strange start to a beautiful story.