Faunaffables

by Jonathon Ward

Two millipedes were out for a walk along the basement floor. They were expressing sympathy for their more recently evolved cousins, the centipedes. “Oh, the aches and pains in their knees.” “The hours to reach their exercise goals!” They twiddled their antennae in amusement as their feet rippled across the floor - ten thousand steps in seconds. They scooted behind the bathroom sink.

An ant was hauling a taco crumb through tall blades of grass and a wasp flew overhead. He hovered above the struggling bug, musing on the poor ant’s plight as she escaped from the footsteps of the picnickers around her. “I remember the day when I was a pupa and could only crawl. One day she’ll evolve and have wings. Then she’ll steal food from the picnickers and sting them!” He zinged a buzzing sneer at the ant and flew away.

Two bees gathering pollen from a garden full of honeysuckle vines looked down and saw a line of ants carrying morsels from the compost heap. They exchanged fluttering looks and chuckled. “They carry garbage in their mouths!” “Their queen must be a pig!” They hummed happily bagging pollen on their hind legs and buzzing with giggles. A hummingbird, who was tasting a variety of blossoms nearby, overheard them. She whirred closer to them and let them know, with a glint of sun on her feathers, that bees and ants both served queens, and she could live as she pleased. She darted off. The bees weren’t pleased and went on about their business. “Who does she think she is?” “Our hive is in a tree.” “We don’t live in the ground!” “Ants dig dirt all day!” “We make honey!” But they tasted bitterness in their work, now, knowing that in bee’s business, they only taste their honey in the winter - if the beekeeper lets them have it.

On a hot summer night, the feral black cat stole into the zoo and wandered through the paths and passed many cages before coming to the panther’s cell. She sat down in front of it and looked at him as he lay sleeping. The panther raised his majestic head and looked back at her with his yellow eyes. He wished he was as small as she was, and he could slip through the bars and go hunting in the night. He could stalk one of his captors at the very least and feed his resentment with his teeth and claws. He lay his head back down with a vague memory of a wilder place where the foliage and the ground beneath him smelled and felt so different. The cat licked her lips. The panther flicked his tail. He saw her pink tongue preen and smooth her ebony fur. She had done a full night’s work, and she was proud of it. In her hunt, the rat had been bossy and arrogant, slipping along the wall beneath the zoo’s fence, until she cornered him. “You don’t dare!” the rat said with bared teeth. “Hunger does,” she pounced. Rat was dinner. The old lady, who used to put out week-old fish in the alley on paper plates, was no longer doing that. Rat poison boxes were put out instead, and the cat had to look further afield for food to take care of herself. The cat lay down beside the panther’s cage and purred herself to sleep. The panther closed his eyes and slept. Their black fur blended into the dark shadows of the zoo, and they dreamed. In her dream, she was as big as he was and could take on bigger prey. In his, he was free to come and go and make his way in a wider world.

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Jonathon Ward is mostly a playwright but also a writer and poet who creates stories in which the weakness of the stronger leads to the desire and delusion to be higher up on the evolutionary tree than others - a quality even in the most highly evolved creature of all, i.e., us.