Stray Country - Season 1 - A Carousel For Pigs - Chapter 22

There is a slaughterhouse not far from your home.  Chances are you've never thought much of it.  Chances are it makes you feel safe.

 

Go for a nighttime stroll.  Wait for the month of rain.  Let the cold into your bones.  And tell me whether or not you feel some kind of ancestral hearthstonian warmth swimming through the cone-sized glow of a street light.

 

They were originally put in for safety. 

 

Because no matter how old we get, no matter how many atoms we split, no matter how much money we print, no matter how many steel birds we put in the sky, no matter how much we reign mother nature we're still afraid of the dark. 

 

But on this nightly walk stop, if you will, beneath the warm soup of light and look up.  Chances are you'll find a slaughterhouse.  You see there is a horror story in the insect world.  A machine that culls bugs by the millions.  Located on every corner of every street in every city in every country.  Something mother bugs warn their young about.  Something father bugs feel calling to them.  Something children bugs baste themselves in night sweats over.

 

Just how many insects were slaughtered to keep you safe at night?  This is a cone-sized corner of Stray Country.  A pint-sized lens by which to see perhaps the modern world is not as safe and clean and carcass free as it pretends to be.