My Hungry Muse

In Bite Me! I am letting the famished imagination out on a field trip. It matters little whether I am following the explorations of ethnobotanists or zoologists-what I am keenly interested in is the bizarre side of Mother Nature's handiwork in the wilds of a tropical rainforest. I have this obsession with undiscovered gigantism in boa constrictors assumed to be extinct, relegated to prehistory along with the dinosaur. I want to chant a mantra in celebration of those lengthy elongated reptiles: 'Come out of hiding, I know you are there.'

But are they there, those primeval super-snakes slithering about, who according to some researchers in herpetology are a mind-blowing eighty feet long with a girth of five or more feet-besting those present-day anacondas half that length with a girth, on average, of a mere metre?

What especially provides a stimulant for the appetite of my hungry muse, more than snakes with lengthy trains, are pitcher plants who manage to lure small mammals to their deaths. To sustain those monsters, the poor devils end up liquefied as essential protein in their bellies.

And as if this bent fascination in giant reptiles isn't enough, I am earnestly interested in hearing about man-eating plants. As yet, I have not seen any scholarly articles in any reputable science journal having to do with those leafy carnivores preying on humans, but that doesn't mean those floriated monsters, having acquired a taste for human flesh, aren't around-waiting patiently for their next weighty meal in some steamy setting in the Amazon basin. In the meantime, I will settle for the commonplace: an octopus snacking on a seagull, or a Conger Eel going for the leg of a diver.

What especially fascinates me and excites my ravenous muse is the marine life existing at the bottom of the deepest oceans, bioluminescent critters that appear like ghostly mermaids to mariners gazing through the window of their bathysphere. It borders on the supernatural, for what is one to make of those colossal clams inhaling the noxious fumes of an active volcanic chimney belching fire, or a lumbering gigantic squid approaching that bathysphere with the intention of embracing it with its sprawling tentacles?

Bite me!

'Bite me!' said an extended leg to a conger eel
comfortably sheltered deep inside a briny cave.
Gritting all his teeth-he was not a pretty sight.
A lengthy demon, more a snake than a fish
lashed out-tore off a generous hunk of meat.
His vibrating jaws invoked a symphonic poem
as he wriggled his body and beamed out a smile.
'You've eaten him!' shrieked the remaining limb.

Soon it, too, was eaten by that burbling diner
who, in exalting praise of his meal, spewed out
a stream of flesh, bits of bone, bristle, and blood.
I kept on descending into a malaise of despair
while each of my arms pleaded 'Bite me!'
to an approaching monster who wore my face.