carnage

the time 11:05pm.
object: hunt for snails

armed with a flashlight and wearing my clogs, i went outside. my mom accompanied me as she is a more hostile enemy to these snails than i am. she relishes the kill, to save all her baby plants and citrus trees from the slimy trail and decimation of priceless foliage and tender buds. until last night. she seemed to be getting squimish. it seems that now we know about them (poor helix aspera) we sort of loathe to kill them. not to mention that they are food, and it is a waste that not even a duck can get to them, but as i've said before ducks are indescriminate. i wish it were a solution. my brother used to get a nickle a snail when we were little (the last heavy el nino cycle) and i won't tell you what he used to do them, except to say that he was a typical boy, the italics use of boy, and that to perhaps lead you, he used to tie string to the legs of beetles- watching them circle round and round until their leg gave way. i hesitate to assert that if we were in a post apocalyptic environment such as found in the movie Delicatessin, i'd eat snails. i don't know if i would. and whose to say garlic and butter wouldn't be rationed also. how many would eat escargo then?

we killed over 30 snails that night after weeks of killing 10-20 at a time on various nights before. you can see we have a problem. but for the most part we're an organic garden so no strong pesticide will enter our grounds. i can't kill them when their cute little antenna heads are poking out of their shells, pulling themselves along or hanging off a leaf. i'd be a terrible hunter. i know this. poor fuzzy bunnies. but i would if i had to, i've eaten rabbit before. it's at times like this, and why i can sympathize with vegetarians, that i know the world isn't as it was intended to be. stay with me here- there's a passage in the bible which you've probably heard before from Isaiah that says "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will like down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling (lion will feed) together; and a little child will lead them." This verse is a favorite of writers talking about anything related to the rapture or the end of the world. I usually think "creepy" when i hear it, mainly bcs I picture Mulder "the truth is out there" or an old man in a bunker, whispering ferventantly to the last hope of the world- usually a man-woman team who've fought to save the world AND THEY'RE PISSED! But i think few examine the beauty of what that means- to peacefully co-exist, where the world is back in alignment, isn't made up of kill or be killed, or fear of death- to me it quite literally represents Paradise (which is Persian for "walled garden" where the king would walk with his favored subjects.)

But for now there are snail carcasses lining the pathways and the rain that tells me they'll come again. It's nothing personal, it's just the unnatural order of things.