Spring-Green Stick Figures
Just now, slouched half-turned toward the window with one leg angled on the sill, listening to Thao Nguyen(*) while working on a project concerning linkages between queer and animal liberation, I started to stare off into space out the window and instead found myself looking right into the eyes of the very young preying mantis perched on my knee looking intently at me.
That felt like good luck to me, especially considering the suddenness of her appearance and the way she looked right in my eyes, as if she had come to tell me something. But of course, she was probably just mystified, having inadvertently hitched a ride on me from the mailbox, which stands among bushes that mantises like. No, not a good luck charm at all, just a scared young animal — like the juvenile turtle I helped cross the road yesterday — grappling with unexpected complexities caused by human constructions. Of course, I hopped gently out the door, keeping my knee as level as possible, and brought her back to the bushes. But it wasn’t until after I had left her in one patch of bushes known to be inhabited by mantises that I realized she must have come from the bushes by the mailbox. I hope she’ll be okay.
I remember one summer day when I was quite young, brooding by myself on the blacktop playground of the neighborhood elementary school when some boys came along and started throwing rocks at a huge preying mantis trapped on the iron grill over one of the windows. I was really scared — of them and for her — but I somehow managed to convince them that preying mantises were an endangered species and the cops would come to get them if they killed her.
These stories aren’t parables. They’re just what happened.
(*) Thao Nguyen is an extraordinary singer-songwriter with a unique vocal style, interestingly shifting rhythms, and breathtakingly poetic (and often startling) lyrics. Her first album, Like the Linen, was released under her own name. Then she dropped the “Nguyen” (I guess because everybody kept mispronouncing it) so you can find her latest album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, under “Thao.” The lyric that startled me into to staring off into space in the first place was from her song Violet on the new album: “it must be hard on your bodyguards when you charge at icicles eye-level to your heart.”
June 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I am always happy to read stories of people who can appreciate the non-humans in their lives without having to explain their presence as Messages From The Universe, and I’m especially happy to read stories in which people explain that non-humans are not here for that purpose.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
but I somehow managed to convince them that preying mantises were an endangered species and the cops would come to get them if they killed her.
that is at least twelve degrees of awesomeness!