Really, it is. Don't read it if you are the squeamish type.
Still with me? Okay. I was out this afternoon cleaning up the dog shit in the back yard. (Not my favorite chore, but a necessary one. We've got 200+ lbs worth of canines continually processing and extruding ex-kibble in a fairly small fenced area. You get the picture.)* Unless the ground is really frozen, the poops are always full of dung beetles. For you urbanites, that's a dung beetle in the pic above. They're fabulous little beasties who live on shit, so even if you are a really relaxed dog owner, they'll save your yard from becoming the Augean stables--although the beetles are not so thorough that you'd want to throw a wedding reception out there.
As I was scooping today I saw that the beetles were covered in thousands of tiny mites. I had never noticed them before, but I gather from reading around the Web that such infestations are very common. The mites just ride around on the beetles and eat up fly larvae and other shit in the shit, so to speak. A beautiful system, isn't it? Life sustained by the waste and decay of other life. Everything is food for something.
The beetles' repast is a reminder of the absurdity of our fetish for food. We rhapsodize over it, write books about it, moralize and agonize over its consumption--yet food is really nothing but dead things on their way to becoming shit. Pretty soon you and I will be dead things on our way to becoming shit. It's a beautiful system.
I watched the bugs for a while, and then Nio and I went in to prepare tomorrow's meal for the little guys. I feel sure he is a god to them. A very generous god.
*I should note for the record that I am not usually the one who does this chore. Dave does it probably 80% of the time. Credit where credit is due.
Photo from Wikipedia
7 comments:
I often watch mites on beetles and the like, and always wonder how they cling on when the smoothly coated beetles go burrowing...
Love this post, but I'm not the squeamish type.
It is a beautiful system but that doesn't mean I'd like to come back as a dung beetle. ;0
Dawn
What bothers me is that we won't be dead things turning into shit. Burial vaults and coffins make it likely that our bodies will remain whole for generations to come, not, as Hamlet says, that we will become suitable to fill a bung hole to keep a wind away. I'm not sure where the old pine box or the new biodegradable coffins fit in, but I think in my state one still has to be embalmed and put in a vault.
Bozo, I feel the same way about embalming, etc. I know that in Tennessee, you can legally be buried without embalming, vault, or casket if you are being buried on private land. No cemeteries in this state provide such a burial, but there are quite a few "eco-bural" sites around the country. There's one in South Carolina.
I don't want to be a dung beetle, either, Dawn--but it's certainly a cushy life, no?
Leo, I don't know why I never noticed the mites before. I guess they are more the rule than the exception. I should watch bugs more ...
Well, it's a *smooshy* life. lol.
Dawn
Ha! That's good, Dawn ;-)
I'm with bozo; it goes against the grain.
And after all, what's a little shit among friends ?
Nothing nasty here.
Now, Cheney-
That's NASTY.
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