A working class beetle's got nothing to lose

The streets grow quiet and cool as the sun sets. Neighbors putter around in their gardens, the smell of cooked food lingers in the air, silhouettes of people washing dishes and the glow of TVs fill windows. Birds and squirrels finish foraging and tuck into nests for the night, there's a low hum of children finishing off their energy reserves as parents beckon them indoors. People pass by on the sidewalk in silence with their leashed dogs, who are taking their last leaks of the evening. It's sunset on a weekday in America.

I'm experiencing this idyllic scene crouched down at the edge of my dank garage catching the last of the sunlight with the bones and teeth of various prairie and woodland critters scattered around me, casually sawing the head off of a squirrel carcass I've been macerating/mummifying for months, peeling off layers of its thin, leathery hyde and thinking about how it would be funny to tan them and make tiny satchels out of them. I'm humming a medley of all of the songs that have been stuck in my head in days past. I watch fat grey grub-like beetles and other carrion-eaters slowly crawl or drop from the darker crevices of the carcass, irritated that I'm disrupting the slow digestive decomposition process they were right in the middle of. It's touching seeing them march across the garage floor in the direct sunlight.

"You can clock out now."

They're hardworking proletariat bugs, and they're literally the underbelly of society. I'm one of the few people who really appreciate their work.

#nature #prose #insects #animals #taxidermy