The Massacre

It’s a massacre.

The otherwise slick surface of the pool is awash in struggling hoppers and pocked by gaping mouths.

The bugs pelt the water in sheets, like winged sleet on each fresh breeze, prompting a feed that feels lewd to me, somehow indecent.

I can’t help imagining how awful it all must be for the hoppers: a leap, an ill-timed gust, then suddenly you’re on the water with a mass of your brethren, panic, everyone struggling, no escape, toothed monsters cruising below the clinging film, the least fortunate pulled under without so much as a scream. It’s horror movie stuff. And shameless anthropomorphization — a naturalist’s greatest sin, I know — but the thought has my heart pounding, and it sticks with me.

For exactly as long as it takes me to tie on an imitation and wade into the fray.

Game on you little monsters.