Goines On: Weeds and wolves

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Goines had pulled that weed in the cypress mulch path only yesterday or the day before. And today it has sprung back. Amazing, really. To Goines and his wife, it was a weed, and weeds were weeds – to be pulled up, roots and all if possible, and trashed. But to the weed itself, it was all there was, it was its life, with a lineage, really, as old as Goines’ maybe. He wondered briefly whether pulling a weed was of the same order as killing a rodent or a wolf that threatened a farmer’s livestock? He couldn’t fathom it.
    Weeds were abundant, and they came back overnight. But wolves didn’t; they needed time to meet and mate, gestate, birth, feed, train their young. The burgeoned human population couldn’t eradicate weeds, at least not by plucking them with fingers like Goines – maybe by spraying Monsanto products? – but humans could, and would, eradicate wolves. Wolves and – how many species were they saying? – lions and tigers and elephants and birds whether they sang or not.

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