The Other Food Chain

In third grade, my teach gave me a little diagram illustrating the food chain model of critter interaction. On the bottom was a row of grass. Above the grass, a fluffy bunny. The bunnies eat the grass and help it to grow by leaving the occasional poop. Higher still, if I remember correctly, there was an eagle. Even though nobody got to eat the eagle, it would feed the grass when it died. Worms and fungus and stuff broken them down so that the grass could use the ingredients. Above it all, the sun dropped little arrows of light on the whole buffet, providing the energy that kept the whole thing running. The little ditto gave me a very clear, if oversimplified, understanding of who was eating who. It seemed like a pretty good system.

Since completing third grade, I've learned that not everyone received the same elementary school hand-out. It seems that some kids got a food chain lesson that goes a little something like this.

The grass should feed everyone else with lots of green, even if its soil is eroding, because it can't do anything else. It doesn't even have legs, the bum. When the grass wilts, eagles are forced to fly to other places where the grass is more productive and less expensive. Some of the more warm-hearted eagles dump manure on the grass, but not too much so it doesn't get even more lazy.

In spite of these eagles' generous efforts to spread manure, the shiftless grass stilll isn't making much green. This has caused some of the rabbits, who were coddled for far too long, to grow scrawny and constipated. Some of them don't appreciate imported grass. They've disappeared all together from some meadows. But the eagles keep eating them. Lately, some eagles have learned to enjoy the taste of foreign rabbits. When the local bunnies start to whine, the eagles inspire them to hang on by providing an abundance of low priced electronics and tax rebates.

When the rabbits are watching videos on their new ipods, purchased with the tax rebates, the eagles eat them. Then the eagles eat the grass, too, even though it's not what it used to be.

When the eagles die, other eagles eat them. And they deserve to, because it was eagles, after all, who make the whole thing run. (The sun--that slacker bastard--and icky worms have nothing to do with it.) And the eagles also deserve their tax rebates.

And this will go on forever and ever.