Prey Bug

[Erminia Scharnberg]

NOAAFisheries is seeking public review and comment on a programmatic Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the expenditure of funds to increase prey availability for endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKWs). This DEIS, conducted under the National Environmental and Policy Act (NEPA), is in response to a recent court order that found NOAA Fisheries did not adequately evaluate the current releases of hatchery fish as prey (food) for SRKWs at a larger, more programmatic scale.

The public scoping opportunities for the prey increase program occurred last year. The Federal Register notice link is provided below. Two public meetings were held (August 30 and 31) online to learn more about this project and to answer any questions about how to provide input to NOAA Fisheries. We considered all of the scoping comments received in the preparation of the DEIS.

In her third book, prey, Jeanann Verlee examines predatory relationships from childhood onward. Drawing parallels between human and non-human predators, the poems collected here strive to illuminate the trauma of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse-exploring what it is to become prey.

Jeanann Verlee is the author of three books of poetry: prey, Said the Manic to the Muse, and award-winning Racing Hummingbirds. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, the Third Coast Poetry Prize, and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize. Her poems and essays are featured in a number of journals, including Academy of American Poets, Adroit, THRUSH, BuzzFeed, and VIDA. She served as poetry editor for Winter Tangerine Review and Union Station, among others. She is a copy editor working across genres, and has edited numerous award-winning books. Verlee is a writing and performance coach who performs and facilitates workshops at schools, theatres, libraries, bookstores, and dive bars across North America. She collects tattoos, kisses Rottweilers, and believes in you. Find her at jeanannverlee.com.

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This is the longest known prey of a marine reptile from the dinosaur age, and may be the oldest direct evidence of a marine reptile eating an animal larger than a human, researchers report August 20 in iScience.

As in the repetition of a nightmare, the horror of my firstescape attempt was repeated. As I leapt into the same branch, the crocodile seizedme again, this time around the upper left thigh, and pulled me under. Like the others,the third death roll stopped, and we came up next to the sandpaper fig branch again.I was growing weaker, but I could see the crocodile taking a long time to kill methis way. I prayed for a quick finish and decided to provoke it by attacking it withmy hands. Feeling back behind me along the head, I encountered two lumps. ThinkingI had the eye sockets, I jabbed my thumbs into them with all my might. They slidinto warm, unresisting holes (which may have been the ears, or perhaps the nostrils),and the crocodile did not so much as flinch. In despair, I grabbed the branch again.And once again, after a time, I felt the crocodile jaws relax, and I pulled free.

I knew I had to break the pattern; up the slippery mud bankwas the only way. I scrabbled for a grip, then slid back toward the waiting jaws.The second time I almost made it before again sliding back, braking my slide by grabbinga tuft of grass. I hung there, exhausted. I can't make it, I thought. It'll justhave to come and get me. The grass tuft began to give way. Flailing to keep fromsliding farther, I jammed my fingers into the mud. This was the clue I needed tosurvive. I used this method and the last of my strength to climb up the bank andreach the top. I was alive!

Escaping the crocodile was not the end of my struggle tosurvive. I was alone, severely injured, and many miles from help. During the attack,the pain from the injuries had not fully registered. As I took my first urgent steps,I knew something was wrong with my leg. I did not wait to inspect the damage buttook off away from the crocodile toward the ranger station.

After putting more distance between me and the crocodile,I stopped and realized for the first time how serious my wounds were. I did not removemy clothing to see the damage to the groin area inflicted by the first hold. WhatI could see was bad enough. The left thigh hung open, with bits of fat, tendon, andmuscle showing, and a sick, numb feeling suffused my entire body. I tore up someclothing to bind the wounds and made a tourniquet for my bleeding thigh, then staggeredon, still elated from my escape. I went some distance before realizing with a sinkingheart that I had crossed the swamp above the ranger station in the canoe and couldnot get back without it.I would have to hope for a search party, but I could maximizemy chances by moving downstream toward the swamp edge, almost two miles away. I struggledon, through driving rain, shouting for mercy from the sky, apologizing to the angrycrocodile, repenting to this place for my intrusion. I came to a flooded tributaryand made a long upstream detour looking for a safe place to cross. My considerablebush experience served me well, keeping me on course (navigating was second nature).After several hours I began to black out and had to crawl the final distance to theswamp's edge. I lay there in the gathering dusk to await what would come. I did notexpect a search party until the following day, and I doubted I could last the night.

The rain and wind stopped with the onset of darkness, andit grew perfectly still. Dingoes howled, and clouds of mosquitoes whined around mybody. I hoped to pass out soon, but consciousness persisted. There were loud swirlingnoises in the water, and I knew I was easy meat for another crocodile. After whatseemed like a long time, I heard the distant sound of a motor and saw a light movingon the swamp's far side. Thinking it was a boat, I rose up on my elbow and calledfor help. I thought I heard a faint reply, but then the motor grew fainter and thelights went away. I was as devastated as any castaway who signals desperately toa passing ship and is not seen.

The lights had not come from a boat. Passing my trailer,the ranger noticed there was no light inside it. He had driven to the canoe launchsite on a motorized trike and realized I had not returned. He had heard my faintcall for help, and after some time, a rescue craft appeared. As I began my 13-hourjourney to Darwin Hospital, my rescuers discussed going upriver the next day to shoota crocodile. I spoke strongly against this plan: I was the intruder, and no goodpurpose could be served by random revenge. The water around the spot where I hadbeen Iying was full of crocodiles. That spot was under six feet of water the nextmorning, flooded by the rains signaling the start of the wet season.

In the end I was found in time and survived against manyodds. A similar combination of good fortune and human care enabled me to overcomea leg infection that threatened amputation or worse. I probably have Paddy Pallin'sincredibly tough walking shorts to thank for the fact that the groin injuries werenot as severe as the leg injuries. I am very lucky that I can still walk well andhave lost few of my previous capacities.

The wonder of being alive after being held - quite literallyin the jaws of death has never entirely left me. For the first year, the experienceof existence as an unexpected blessing cast a golden glow over my life, despite theinjuries and the pain. The glow has slowly faded, but some of that new gratitudefor life endures, even if I remain unsure whom I should thank. The gift of gratitudecame from the searing flash of near-death knowledge, a glimpse "from the outside"of the alien, incomprehensible world in which the narrative of self has ended.

It seems to me that in the human supremacist culture ofthe West there is a strong effort to deny that we humans are also animals positionedin the food chain. This denial that we ourselves are food for others is reflectedin many aspects of our death and burial practices. The strong coffin, conventionallyburied well below the level of soil fauna activity, and the slab over the grave toprevent any other thing from digging us up, keeps the Western human body from becomingfood for other species. Horror movies and stories also reflect this deep-seated dreadof becoming food for other forms of life: Horror is the wormy corpse, vampires suckingblood, and alien monsters eating humans. Horror and outrage usually greet storiesof other species eating humans. Even being nibbled by leeches, sandflies, and mosquitoescan stir various levels of hysteria.

This concept of human identity positions humans outsideand above the food chain, not as part of the feast in a chain of reciprocity butas external manipulators and masters of it: Animals can be our food, but we can neverbe their food. The outrage we experience at the idea of a human being eaten is certainlynot what we experience at the idea of animals as food. The idea of human prey threatensthe dualistic vision of human mastery in which we humans manipulate nature from outside,as predators but never prey. We may daily consume other animals by the billions,but we ourselves cannot be food for worms and certainly not meat for crocodiles.This is one reason why we now treat so inhumanely the animals we make our food, forwe can not imagine ourselves similarly positioned as food. We act as if we live ina separate realm of culture in which we are never food, while other animals inhabita different world of nature in which they are no more than food, and their livescan be utterly distorted in the service of this end.

Before the encounter, it was as if I saw the whole universeas framed by my own narrative, as though the two were joined perfectly and seamlesslytogether. As my own narrative and the larger story were ripped apart, I glimpseda shockingly indifferent world in which I had no more significance than any otheredible being. The thought, 'This can't be happening to me, I'm a human being, I ammore than just food!' was one component of my terminal incredulity. It was a shockingreduction, from a complex human being to a mere piece of meat. Reflection has persuadedme that not just humans but any creature can make the same claim to be more thanjust food. We are edible, but we are also much more than edible. Respectful, ecologicaleating must recognize both of these things. I was a vegetarian at the time of myencounter with the crocodile, and remain one today. This is not because I think predationitself is demonic and impure, but because I object to the reduction of animal livesin factory farming systems that treat them as living meat.

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