The Pearl 2020

36
the street after a storm a decade later. Even the bones are eaten, only the plastic
and metal tags remains.
They hunt in our cities with no one noticing, as I’m sure they do everywhere.
They’re hunters after all. But as I saw those collars in the street, as the
street cleaners erased the mess which would become local legend, I knew the
noble and lofty bird on the United States Seal did not exist. It’s a fabrication,
a fictional recasting of a bloodthirsty scavenger which does what it must to
survive. It does the same thing in our cities it has done in the forests and
mountains of this continent for eons. It hunts. To pretend otherwise is selfdeception.
When we make our cities, we transpose ourselves onto the world and
demand that we be made immune to its dangers. We paint eagles on the murals
of our capitols, and fancy to ourselves that they stand for nobility, honor
and civilization. When we pretend civilization and nature are separate we demand
to be made safe from the world and all its natural dangers. We say we
deserve a tame world free of all danger, from the tooth and claw. But there
will always be hunters.