God's Creatures

Crabs tip toe along the bottom daintily picking at morsels with their crushing claws. This is an arena for carnivores, creatures made for tearing flesh, or picking carcasses clean with a kiss. Hinged mouths engineered for swallowing whole lay in wait in mud or stalk weedy hideouts for prey. Others prowl oceans fitted with rows of serrated teeth or have bellies as big as trucks to house their kill. Some have arms studded with vacuum cups that caress and hide a deadly beak pouched just below a brain. No screams can be heard here or, if let loose, find a register in the human ear. Pain is tapped out in tiny tremors too subtle for our senses to feel, death signaled by a surface splash or kept out of sight. The suffering is seismic. Blake's terrestrial tiger pales to a pussy-cat compared to the arrayed instruments of slaughter that have a home here. God must love these killers to witness the pain of their bite or else floats anesthetized in an infinite, dreamless state.