When a spider catches a fly in its web, I can find a satisfaction within myself that it is good and right, for the victim in this captured entanglement seems appropriate: the fly is a disgusting creature full of germs and is also an annoyance; but when I see a hummingbird, with its elegant grace of darting and hovering flight, and its shimmering, colorful coat caught also in a web--this time in the snare of a much larger arachnid, I shudder at the injustice and recoil at this thing and call it evil. "Too much, too much!" is all I can say: the bird does not fit there, and the spider has outgrown its appropriate size, becoming a monster, rather than a help. It is a monster. And now the grace and beauty of this gentle bird shall have its very life sucked out of it through the malevolent straws and narrow eyes of a creeping, feeling thing with too many awkward legs, like a thief's hand bent on violating all that is good and sacred in the home of a kind mother.
I can only conclude that this world bespeaks of a transcendent good, which is now corrupted, though it retains much of its original state of wholeness and offers hints of paradise. How shall I rescue this bird without the horror of looking my enemy in the eye and even with a stick offered by the benevolence of a tree, avoid feeling its bulbous, bagged body squash under the force of my prodding? Oh, to think of it, and the awful memories produced!
Now: the bird will drink nectar and bring delight to our eyes amid colors and hues only flowers can bring, whereas that dark, evil creature shall drink nothing except death!
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