Kreature Killers

I wrote the essay under this on 6.17.24 in a little notepad with **** and *****, while sitting at the hydrodam, climbed up among the scuffed grey rocks and ruffage that cracks through them. We meet to write occasionally, lesser than before, but still cherished when we all can manage it. The bullfrogs kept their pattern below us and as our 15 minute timer ran towards it’s own croaking call, a cardinal too joined the chorus.

As I whistled back to find him, ***** looked, smiled at me, and then continued to write their piece. I told them later what it was, and they told me how they had accepted it simply as “something j does,” even if neither of us got to see that red flash by.

I also want to post context to the poem which lays at the end, written just the other day now (7.3.24) and a few futher inspirations on the exchange of life which is or refuses to be seen as worth the dirge.

A last notice is I have three poems published in Albatross 31. Pomoxis i & ii, and “for Jose”. I hope to get energy to put together more of my work out there.

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I save houseflies now. Two bees today, both in rough spots, buckled over for one reason or another. Trust earned to aid, even to the stinger. But the house flies? At least 7 this week.

Part of it is I’m afraid to hurt things. Yet, years ago, my rabbit’s litterbox, infested with gnats that sweltered around my room? I begged for massacre.

Now though it’s a quick snatch, slap on the wrist, and out the window. Not all make the pass, some rage and grab then smash in a quick solution. The most gruesome of recents? - sliced through the mesh screen with one sturdy press.

I mean flies live like what? 3 days?* Brief, pitiful hunger tugging them by the taste, that of rot and decay, a cycle they must know all too well by their own bretheren endings.

But I’m doing it to try and remember that all life has a purpose.

My kids at my preschool job love bugs, even the ants who crawl uncomfortably through the classroom chasing crumbs sprinkled from their small. They are a special sign of life in the classroom, one they always reach to touch.

But they are still learning gentility and the squelched pillbug and shatterd beetles split so easy in their fingers.

“I broke him,” they say, and toss the carcass to the side.

Sometimes, we go on “slug hunts,” reaching through the plantains and dandelion green leaves, and they pick at the banana slugs full of sweet yellow slime in the brush.

I never take first touch. Disturbing them in space, like red efts and snails I walk a wide-bearth for on trails.

A training the other month described this direct experience in their own work:

“A few salamanders may get squished.”

They spoke of seeing and exploration, experience and slowly that empathy grows.

I put a worm back last time someone had palmed me, rolling the log back with a dirtying grip and talked about returning these things I call “living creatures” to their home.

“Bye worm,” I said. And two echoed.

It is not the greatest rest of the day which followed, and I am in the next morning tired, anxious. The slug hunt is only able to carry so much good through until the next event - though a big slug is the perfect tool for brevity. But as I arrive, a kid cries out.

“j! We returned a worm to it’s home!”

*House flies live 28 days on average.

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Things have changed a bit from my space here, not without issues and the last poem is in response to the mouse who’s life I ended in a snap with a cranberry. It’s been weeks working up to this murder. She stole a dried raspberry, globs of peanut butter, and sacrificed cracker leftovers. They knocked over my deadfalls and kept brave in their search. When I heard the trap I made myself rise out of bed, to walk over. And I spent her final moments, watching even the twitch leave her body. I took her outside to place her under the apple tree, among the burdock and went off to write this poem in the dark by the waterfall:

the body still warm,
cupped in my searing sun shine glove
small pink patches under its belly
told me it was girl,

maybe mother,

now made heat, in hand.
no beat to scurry.
no foot softly twitching its last.

now, pried out the trap,
it's last feast never foraged.

by the tail plucked up but by body,
just hot

through the fresh plastic.