Notes From A Survey
I'm sitting here squinting down a scope
Whose barrels isolate and implify
Sheer carnage. God, they had no bloody hope
Down there in that stuff. What a way to die.
Legs gone, or twisted weirdly in pain,
Necks hard-rictused with agony. It's hell.
Spiracle cover lobe. Recurrent vein.
Tibial spur. Third submarginal cell.
All the beloved of the true believer:
Right on. These dudes would spook Sigourney Weaver.
All year the kamikazean chitin
Was slaughtered in the rigged and doctored fields,
Almost as if divine and spiting wind
Had swept it onward to increase the yields.
And we, the vigilant, with bins and net,
And hero's pose, and clear quickened eye,
Surveyed it all impartially, and yet
We really wanted (this I can't deny)
To chant the mantra, pipe the pious song:
"New to science!" "New record for Hong Kong!"
At first I was disarmed by the whole thing.
There seemed no symmetry in the approach,
No strategy, control, or sampling
Directive to inform the task. How gauche!
And, lathered with mosquito-bane and sweat,
Lugging great gizmo-loads of rare device,
Thorn-snagged, scrub-snarled, and Nephila-beset,
And hammered in the elemental vice,
I did my bit. And still remember how,
From Crooked Island down to Tai A Chau,
Roamed bovines, Larsonesque, deep in the weed,
Trailing great shreds of net that were our traps,
(Now maddeningly mobile). Yes, to cede
A trap, this site, that habitat perhaps,
To arbitrary stuff like chance and rain
(Thumbing impudent noses at our hap-
Less dog's breakfast of data) was butt-pain.
And what I first took for unrigoured slap-
Dashery in sample methodology
(This surely can't be how you do ecology!)
I later found practicable and apt.
These boys, I thought, have earned their field cred,
And rolled their shirtsleeves up, and lamped the fact
That desk-finesse seldom pans out. Instead,
You play the field by ear and by snout.
There's always some odd happenstance or fit
To skew the job. Cast physics-envy out:
Get in; grab data; out again; legit.
Inelegant? You bet. But we're not barmy.
To crack this baby right we'd need an army.
Steve Reels
P.40
Back to Contents
Back to Porcupine Homepage
Go to Department Homepage