Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver Page A

cascade of deaths one after another, extending far beyond the reach of what we ourselves have bulldozed or killed. Scientists who study this destruction have estimated, for example, that domesticated cats in North America kill as many as four million songbirds every day . (The millions of feral cats out there—those that have left human habitation and are fed by no one but themselves—add many moredeaths to this toll.) These animals are a living extension of our possession. There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess.
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    A sad loss recently befell my friends, the orchid growers who witnessed the sad destruction of Cancún many years ago: The large, forested lot next to their home was cleared for development. They had been assured, from the time they moved into their house, that the beautiful piece of wild land abutting them was not for sale. But everything has its price, it seems, and now when I visit them we sit on the porch facing away from the absurdly huge, modern house that was built next door, right up to the edge of its lot on every side, and though we don’t speak of it, we are mourning. Perhaps there really is no such thing as saving the wilderness next door for our own enjoyment. Enjoyment goes only with the enjoyers, who will be the death of this place—of every place. People love the woods but can’t abide the mosquitoes, so we spray insecticide from airplanes, which ends up killing not just mosquitoes (and the encephalitis germ we dread) but also monarch butterflies, ladybugs, lacewings, and the birds and lizards that eat the poisoned ants.
    My daughter, a few years after she surrendered the world’s best shell to that hermit crab, did a science-fair project on the aerial mosquito spray of choice, malathion, and its effects on life beyond mosquitoes. She discovered that at unbelievably minute concentrations it still causes the tiny microorganisms in our wetlands to swim in desperate circles and then die. This zooplankton—uncharismatic though it may be—is the staff of life, the stuff that supports the tiny fish, which support the bigger fish, which are eaten by raccoons and bears and herons and people and bald eagles. The toxin kills the bugs that pester you, and another million creatures that you’ve never thought about or even noticed. From an insect’s point of view, let’s face it, the obliteration of all to punish the perceived crimes of an infinitesimal percentage amounts to precisely the horror that we humans have named, in our own world, ethnic cleansing.
    I don’t know if the average human mind can open wide enough to think of it that way. Last night I slapped a mosquito that was drinking from my arm and then stared awhile at the little splat, feeling mildly avenged at the sight of my foe’s blood until I realized, of course, that the blood was my own. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to do the right thing! We take care of ourselves, we destroy; we don’t take care of ourselves, we destroy. Mosquitoes, I have been told, are important pollinators in the Arctic. So, good, they have their place in the grand scheme, and I’ll vote against aerial spraying on behalf of everything else that goes before the fall, but it’s taking me some time to get to that emotional plane where I can love a mosquito. It may in fact require more than a few lifetimes’ remove from the varmint-killing ethic whence I arose. My generation has taken historic steps toward appreciating nature, setting aside more parklands, and enjoying them in greater numbers than any before it. But if we are going to hold on to this place in any form that includes