I acknowledge this metaphor of predation is cheap. I don’t fault the sand striker for hunger, or for hunting. It works much harder than I do, someone who buys meat already dead and plucked. Part of the reason I find its body gruesome may be a hardwired instinct in the animal in me, an animal that fears snakes and creatures that move like them. When the sand striker snatches a fish and begins to feast, it is not thinking of what the fish is feeling. It has no complex brain and no sense of morality, which means its intentions are never cruel. A worm cannot shirk a duty it does not know. But we
...more
