An icicle began to thaw and a drop fell, enabling daisies to grow. The camera closed in on a butterfly drying its wings on one, when a frog’s tongue attacked the frail creature. The frog was ravaged by a snake, the snake in turn was seized by a pair of talons and wiggled its adieu to the camera below, as a falcon joined the horizon. The white haired man returned to explain.

“The food chain,” he began.

I didn’t feel well. Mrs. Wella put a new reel on the projector. I rose to sharpen my pencil. I ground it down to a stub, smelling the old and new shreds of lead and wood tossing around in an earthy mix.

“Sit down, Kate,” ordered Mrs. Wella.

I stepped back to my desk in a trance, overcome by the drier sound of lions tearing the skin of some hoofed creature, quite like the raking of dead leaves off a driveway.

“Can you pick up the pace, Kate?” questioned Mrs. Wella.

The aisle before me turned into a stream I waded down, as fish dodged from me as they would a grizzly paw.

“Kate? Is everything all right?”

I heard some of the children laughing. It felt as if my brain were a small cork bobbing about the five oceans of the world. How fast must the hare flee so as not to wither into another? How high should the cricket leap? How pointed must horns be in order to fend off those who wish to eat us? I didn’t want to be eaten. What defences would I have against grown men?

“Kate? Kate? Wake up!” I discovered a collage of worried faces peering down at me, including those who usually tried to trip me. My mind was soupy with confusion. I remember hearing myself repeat, “paradise lost”.

“It’s all Adam’s fault,” I wailed to Adam Freeman’s dismay.

“Nu-uh! I wasn’t anywhere near her!” he protested.

I continued, “If he hadn’t bitten the apple, none of the animals ever would have started biting! Why should God punish us all?! It’s not fair! It’s not fair! I didn’t do anything!”

Mrs. Wella seemed to catch on, but her face looked all the more worried. “Shh, now you just hush, darling …”

Dorothy told me to sleep. She was the school nurse, known to soothe the principal Mr. Liverpool’s headaches. Contradictions, enigmas, frolicked in my mind. Do lions hate zebra? Then why do they eat them? If it is because they like zebra, why do they growl before pouncing? Why would they eat a friend? Does the zebra become the lion? Or does the lion become part zebra?

The sick room walls were silent, pink, except for a poster of a human silhouette with foodstuffs drawn inside. The slogan read, “You are what you eat.” I wondered what adults were always trying to get at. If I were what I was forced against my free will to eat, then was I not already many living things? Wasn’t I a turkey, a rabbit, part pig and cow by now?