For the past three years, I have had the great privilege of working in a home office that overlooks several hundred acres of prairie. As I gnash my teeth over the struggles of my professional life, I can look up and watch the very real life and death gnashing of my prairie neighbors as they struggle to survive the winter. Coyotes and deer routinely lope by. A variety of hawks – red-tailed, rough legged and Harrier – also make their living on this prairie, and at night I can occasionally hear the great horned owl. While the coyotes may occasionally get lucky and bag a feeble deer, all of these predators rely on voles as their 
preeminent food group. These voles and other field mice are the lowliest of mammals, residing at the very bottom of the food chain. Coyotes will sniff along the snow and
then make a little leap, pounce and when they stand up I can see the small vole briefly squirming in its grip. The coyote then puts his head back and swallows the doomed vole in toto. Red tailed hawks swoop down grab a vole and carry it back to the tree and then proceed to rip it to shreds. Even without binoculars you can see the fur flying.
These daily dramas made me wonder what life would be like at the bottom of the food chain. Voles have a life with absolutely no hope for the future with the sure knowledge that inevitably they will be snatched and crushed to death with one clench of the jaws. As we move up the food chain, we begin to value animals as individuals. Two years ago, I was delighted to see the three legged coyote again and again and cheered on his gritty survival. I also remember the international incident several years ago when a seal had somehow been trapped in some ice floes, and the rescue of this individual animal became a nightly news event as multiple nations achieved a momentary détente to collectively break open the ice to create a passage for the seal to reach open water. Such glories were ridiculously out of reach of the lowly vole, which exists not as an individual, but only collectively as a species, whose primary function was to feed those above them.
Our two suburban dogs have been largely oblivious to voles, preferring the ridiculous futility of chasing squirrels. However, one day a vole somehow got into our basement, giving the dogs a sustained hunting opportunity. For several days they ineptly ran around the basement trying to capture the poor creature. Finally Fred seized the vole and brought it upstairs, dumped it on the rug and triumphantly looked around soaking in the expected adulation. This modest success seemed to reawaken their long dormant hunting skills and ever since, the dogs have become blood thirsty hunters on their walks. They began to hunt like coyotes, using the sniff and pounce method, but found limited success, particularly since they were on a leash.
I have steadfastly shirked any responsibility for these dogs, announcing early and often that they are, in fact, not my dogs, but rather belong to the rest of the family. One day no one else was around so by default I became the dog walker. We headed outside in the bitterly cold wind, and the dogs immediately started sniffing and straining against the leash along the brush at the edge of the driveway. Fred pawed at the ground, jumped up and pounced. At first I thought that this was a cute imitation of his long lost coyote cousins, but then to my horror realized that he had actually bagged a vole. I was thrown into a quandary regarding my conflicting roles as guardian of defenseless creatures vs. letting Fred claim his right to his kill. And a kill it was. There was no struggle; the limp head of the vole hung out of Fred’s mouth. It was as if the vole was embracing its role as a nameless victim, raising the white flag as soon it was grabbed, saying “Go ahead eat me for lunch, I’m happy to take one for the circle of life team.”
I was in the midst of reading the book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which dissects humans’ complicated food chains, which are largely hidden from view by a pervasive industrial agriculture. The author Michael Pollan explores his conflicted carnivority by becoming a hunter and stalking a wild pig in the California brush. To his shock, he finds that he thrills to the chase and exults in his kill. He reconciles his disturbing stirrings of innate predatory behavior by drawing the line between pure recreational bloodlust and putting food on the table. These thoughts were semi-coherently ricocheting through my mind as I grabbed the vole’s head and tried to yank it out of Fred’s mouth. Clearly Fred was lusting for the kill as he tugged back. We have dutifully provided him with three squares a day and the occasional table scrap, therefore I made the judgment that Fred’s resistance represented the inappropriate joys of purely recreational sport hunting. At the same time I had to admit that Fred’s diet consisted of EXACTLY the same meal every day of his life. While I think that I could survive on a steady diet of BLTs, I must admit that I might appreciate an occasional spice in the variety of life.
Suddenly I felt a give in my tugging. I noticed that Fred had not eased up, and could only imagine that I was about to yank the head off of this poor vole in the name of some sort of confused stewardship. Fred had caught the vole fair and square, rejecting his identity as a pampered pet, and establishing himself, however briefly as a real player in the prairie food chain. If Fred wanted to eat the vole, who was I to interfere? I let go and in one gulp the vole was gone. We finished our walk, came inside and Fred immediately reverted back his original identity – a pampered pet with unlimited spare time, sunning himself on the cozy couch overlooking the prairie, occasionally looking up to vicariously bark at a passing deer. Later on, I found a totally intact vole that had been upchucked on our dining room rug.
The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. like spot, post, stop) and the number of dashes indicates the the number of letters. One of the words will rhyme with the preceding or following line. Your job is to solve the puzzle using the above rules and context of the poem. Scroll down for answers.
It would be nice if Mother Nature could make a master —- chart
That way everybody could tell predator and prey apart.
Alas, it might come as disturbing news for voles and various —-
To learn that they are no more than a meal to the hungry owl.
But when chasing a deer a —- could explain,
“Don’t take it personally, it’s just the food chain.”
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Answers: flow, fowl, wolf
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