Sleep, Creep, Leap by Benjamin Vogt

Author:Benjamin Vogt [Vogt, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

The preying mantis is upside down on the culvers root. One arm is feeding the body of a bumblebee to its vice-grip jaws, the other cradles the bumblebee’s head in the elbow. The head is still moving.

Another mantis is near the top of a butterfly bush, but with the head of a skipper butterfly completely missing. Both arms are holding the winged body like a corn cob.

Carnage is good for a garden. The decay and death rebuild the soil, smother weeds, create homes for all kinds of insects and amphibians. I’m always stunned when people respond to my mantis stories by covering their ears, because I know that without those stories, without the mantis, I’d have a very poor garden. The more that is devoured, the more evidence of life changing hands, the more I know that I’ve helped start a thriving ecosystem. The satisfaction a mantis has after stalking its prey, lunging and capturing, is the same fulfillment I feel. I am nourished by a headless bumblebee, through memory and story, and the thin line that separates its fate from my own. We both come from the soil, and indeed are soil, only given temporary reprieve from its confines.

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