Sunday, June 05, 2005

Genocide

He stretches his legs, waking from a doze in the warm afternoon sun. Life is good. There's not much to do today but eat and sleep. He stretches again. His joints crackle slightly. He wipes his face and picks up another tasty snack. Then he hears the noise. It's like thunder but it's more sustained. "Will it rain?" he wonders. The sound fades then gets louder as if it is moving further away and then returning. Each cycle it sounds a little closer. He takes another bite. The noise increases, shaking the ground. "What could it be?" he thinks. Then the leading edge of a disk shape starts to block the sun. He scrambles to get out of the way but it is too late. Beneath the disk, four huge metal bars are attached to a central hub. They are spinning ... fast. The updraft is powerful. He grabs onto something and tries to keep from being sucked upward. He sees others flying up to get crushed by the blades their body parts swirl in a bloody cyclone. His grip loosens and he flies upward to meet the invader. A blade catches him in the midsection but he grabs on, only to watch the lower half of his body, crushed and severed, fly into the whirlwind and disappear. For an instant more he keeps his grip on the blade, and then he too is gone. The disk shape moves on. The sun shines down on a scene of utter devastation. Body parts lie strewn in the grass. The blood puddles before soaking into the soil. There is his top half. A flicker of life remains. He twitches and sees the green carapace of his front legs move. His compound eyes view one last mosaic of the world, and then he dies. And that my dear is why I am philosophically opposed to mowing lawns.

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