Compassion

Compassion: Look out for this on a Evanston pavement: a black ground-beetle inverted, its tiny rowing motions arrest attention.  It is struggling to right itself.  Examine it!  Kneel down if you have to.  You’ll see the predicament the beetle is in – it has no legs, all six have been nipped at their bases.  The stumps flail. The fraying carapace rocks gently back and forth upon the ground.  It can never be restored.  Look closer, a crew of ants is busy with it, eating their meat rare.  On Washington Street in June, I bent over and inspected a noiseless dying such as this, and compassion obligated me to destroy the creature.  The black body was surprisingly yielding – like little fruit underfoot.  When the work was done it looked as if a single mulberry had rotted there upon the sidewalk.  Dotted through the mess, like seeds, were the carcasses of ants.