The Horns of the Altar
- Well intrepid Shmoopers, it's time we talked about snakes. Dillard sees a copperhead, and after checking to make sure she has her snakebite kit in her pocket, decides to cozy up and watch it.
- As she watches, a crazy thing happens: A mosquito lands on the snake's head and starts sucking.
- Dillard thinks about how everything is a parasite on something else—parasitic insects, she tells us, comprise ten percent of the animal kingdom.
- Parasitic insects are disgusting, and there basically isn't a bird that doesn't have lice. Insects die because they're full of the larvae of other insects—species are just cannibalizing each other all the time up in here.
- She almost never sees a creature (especially an insect) that isn't missing a limb or a tail or a wing. The ones who are intact have scars from narrowly escaping something that tried to eat them.
- She thinks about how humans are also parasites and predators. Who among us hasn't scarred and been scarred by someone else?
- Wholeness, she surmises, isn't the default; it's the exception.
- Still, even though the world is constantly trying to eat us, even though we're all going to die, even though you'll never want to touch a bird again now that you now how licey they are, she reckons it's pretty good to be here.
- Dillard imagines being a sacrifice tied to an altar, freeing herself from the bonds, and escaping to live another day.