Rate this Entry

"A Wolf Among Cattle"

Posted 12-30-2007 at 05:48 AM by Heretic

Alongside stampeding herds of glass and steel I pad. They rumble their way down asphault migration trails. I don't pick out prey, for surely the crazed ranchers long for an excuse to open fire. Instead, I watch. I practice spotting weaknesses in their attention span, but don't act on it. Just in time for the tetranual culling of the electorate.

Suerly... at least one hopes, they know they're just meat on the hoof. wallets fattened up just enough but not too much, lest they have reserve enough to seek new pastures. Rather, they subsist to the next brief spring paycheck.

It's a long winter for the wolf also, but the usual benefits of winter are denied. Scratching at snow and earth for what little prey are left available, the big game of old are but a distant memory. At best, the wolf can show other wildlife how best to use their eyes, their ears, their nose.

However, heightened sense are their own bane. The glare of urban deserts becomes more accute. Square upgrowths in suburban plains turns sharper. Electric moos of automotive herds more grating. Their their emissions pack more sting and burn. The wolf snorts forcefully to clear his nostrils with a shake of his mane.

Long adapted to heat and cold, the wolf thinks nothing of new extremes felt on his skin. Cooled by inner calmness and warmed by insight alight, the wolf sees the old patterns in this new wilderness.

Digital/financial sharks swim stock market oceans.

Writhing leeches offer themselves to be your public relations face; trading their own hideousness for that of their hosts.

Hackling hyenas of real estate wait on the nearly-dead for their next meal, though actively take down those fighting to take one breath past their last.

Yet, the Great Bear, teacher of man, slumbers on, knowing his time is long afar.

And the wolf, brother to man, gazes on with a deceptively fierce brightness of his yellow eyes. He knows this isn't a time to howl.

http://www.politicalgroove.com/pictu...0&pictureid=43

Comments 7

Total Comments 7

Comments

	Hooooooowwwwwwllll! I could almost hear it's eerie song.
	Posted 01-04-2008 at 03:12 PM by Teri B.

	Wow, I got goose bumps with the imagery.
	Posted 01-10-2008 at 08:18 PM by Veronica

	Maybe it's time to howl yet...
	Posted 02-16-2008 at 05:14 PM by Heretic

	Photos courtesy of PoetryChic
	Posted 02-16-2008 at 05:15 PM by Heretic

I've been comparing the Wall Street metldown with yet another of my ecological paradigms again- while watching MASSIVE Nature, and wondered at the potential of a stockholder/taxpayer "Bait Ball" being organized.

A bait ball is when predatory sea animals like sharks and dolphins manipulate an otherwise beneficial group behavior against predation.

In the example of the above named documentary dolphins send a few down deep to scare anchovies or other types of small fish best adapted to shallow ocean floors, rocky crevaces and reefs up near the surface or catch them in migrations in wide open water. They blow bubbles [something most fish just don't see in their world coming from another animal] along wtih sonar to barrage and wall them into reacting with their huddle-up behaviors.

Dolphins work the bait ball from the sides and above [breeching just enough to pounce back down] along with birds also diving, as sharks keep the fish up from below. Sharks don't need to surface for air obviously, so having them take up this position saves the dolphins a lot of grief- despite the fact the two are normally fierce rivals and dolphins sometimes prey to sharks.

How would this work in financial markets an economist [or economic and business majors in college] might ask.

Suppose normally ugly rivals and nasty enemies suddenly work together to corral tax payers, comsumers and stockholders into a bad sitation based on their predictable investing and spending behaviors which might've served them well at other times. Wall Street investment firms, banks, realators, regulator offices, republicans, democrats and ideological think tanks don't normally get along well nor organize alongside each other with great efficiency, certainly not in a rush to suddenly discover $700,000,000,000 [count those zero's] as being available for spending on the nation's credit card.

And yet here they are, some blowing bubbles up our collective asses while their arch enemies join in to bar us from other escape avenues. I'm sure the bailout, in some form, is necessary. However I can't help but see the next feeding frenzy being lined up. Our responses are limited, adequate awareness of the problem is even narrower, and we're hoping our flight'n'fight instincts are enough to save ourselves.

In honor of McCain's service as a U.S. Navy aviator I will compare his dropping into D.C. after the original compromise was drafted to that of the ocean birds [say for example the Red Footed Booby] diving into the bait ball the dophins and sharks arranged.