what goes around, comes around
Mice in the meadow are as abundant as butterweed and corn lily. Which is fortunate, all the animals agree, for their organizational skills are superb, parcelling labour according to abilities. It was all about the efficiencies and nobody in the meadow went hungry.
Labour was less onerous by pulling together. A murder of crows were encouragers and broadcast a message of help-needed if, indeed, help was needed. Soon, with accommodations for some and reliance upon the generosity of others, the meadow was a marvel of harmony for everyone — provided you were vegetarian.
But one day somebody bought the old farm house. Half in disrepair, the animals of the meadow hardly expected to see the long bi-pedal print of humans again. Humans brought hounds and hounds brought hunt. Life in the valley was on the run again.
Work was scheduled around feeding time for the humans and their mutts. Fed, they slept. Sleeping, the meadow was busy planting, gathering, trading. Always on the ready to scatter at first scent or sight of the cursed cur and her reckless pups whose paws could crush.
An increasing amount of trade went underground, through a vast network of tunnels and burrows. Those who dwelt on the surface, which was most of the meadow, relied on the underground and the lines of trust were stressed taunt. Still they held, even for those who dwelt above in nests, who took to patterns of commerce mirroring the tunnels underground. Patterns shifted with the weather, lower when pressure was high. Higher when lower.
Then surface dwellers focused on defence, becoming increasingly attuned to the habits of the farm family and their companion animals. The young were trained in skills of subtlety, so much so they could smell what might happen a moment from now. Intuiting. Anticipating. Expanding their seer skills to the weather, to signs of fire, to travellers not indigenous and likely carnivorous.
Until finally the animals in the meadow, marshalled by the mice, as abundant as butterweed and corn lily, became as if invisible to the bi-pedals and their reckless mutts. Which is fortunate, all the animals agree, for their organizational skills are superb, parcelling labour according to abilities. Including payment for their silence from the larder of the bipedal. It was all about the efficiencies and nobody in the meadow went hungry.
