A Vicious Circle (Fiction)

Carmine was a red garter snake, one of only two of its kind in existence. One day Carmine wriggled into a field and started munching on field mice...sometimes two at a time. Carmine was so euphoric, it loved the crunchiness of the mice and delighted in their slightly nutty taste. Carmine was as happy as a chipmunk in a wilderness full of Oak trees. Carmine was a contented snake.

Suddenly a hawk flew down, scooped up Carmine and in an instant, bit off its ruby colored head. The hawk was elated because it loved the slightly nutty flavor of garter snakes and with its blood the hawk did slake. A slack-jawed, naive, 16 year old High School dropout, tired of hacking into small town Savings and Loans and depleting Senior Citizens measly savings, was out hunting field mice and garter snakes when he saw the hawk fly by. He lifted his 22-rifle and though a poor shot, struck the bird near the heart,bringing it, mortally wounded, to the ground.

"Dang!" yelled the boy, who had been bullied most of his life by family and schoolmates. He vaguely remembered a story about G. Gordon Liddy, where the former Watergate mastermind had eaten the raw heart of a rat to gain emotional and spiritual strength. The naive, impressionable lad, at his wits end, gnawed his way into the hawk’s chest cavity. There, he enjoyed the slightly nutty taste of the hawk’s heart and then headed merrily toward his 33 year old girlfriend’s home, where he had dreams of hacking into the Chase-Manhattan Bank....onward and upward he dreamed.

As the boy hopped along, he crossed a different field, one that hadn’t been mowed for several months. Nearly oblivious to his surroundings, he didn't even notice when he was fatally bitten by a black widow spider, which heartily enjoyed the slightly nutty flavor of human blood. The spider, quite contented with its homo-sapien repast, crawled down into the grass where it ran into a field mouse, which swallowed the slightly nutty flavored spider in one gulp.  The field mouse trotted merrily to its hole, where awaiting it was Scarlett, the only red garter snake in existence. The Scarlett struck out and in a few swallows, ate the slightly nutty flavored field mouse whole.

Scarlett was pleasurably satisfied and went to share its joyful experience with its fellow garter snakes. However, all the other snakes, sure in their conviction, ostracized Scarlett, not, as you might expect, because it was of an unusual color, but because it had eaten one of its own. Scarlett, suddenly alone in the world, crawled out into the field where it died of unhappiness. Its body soon decomposed; enriching the soil with its slightly nutty tasting remains.