At the opening of a new plant built according to her plan for a calm cattle walk to death, Temple waits at the killing station. When the first cow arrives, she places her hand on its soft hide, feeling the beating heart beneath the skin. Then the machine thumps the cow on its head and death is instantaneous. Temple says, "It was an individual and now it is gone. Where do they go?"
I don't know, but I do know I can't witness the going unsentimentally as she does.
This morning, the annual beetle infestation of The Lemon Fair began in earnest. I swept up somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 of the little bugs. When I leaned in on the window shelf with my small brush and dustbin, I stopped because of one waving head and one forelimb. I looked more closely and snapped my camera, but I didn't linger, even to focus, because at once the bug became one rather than just one of many pests.
I took the ladybugs outside, tumped them into the dirt below the blooming asters, and turned back inside, where no other dying creature lay in sight.
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