Scrapbooking

       You stand and listen, stand still and listen hard. You’d roll your ears if you were able to. The predator at your feet is capable of that stunt. Its thin, black radars twitch together with its tail and whiskers. But it lacks your wit and attention span, and in less than a minute of complete silence, it gets bored and walks away to its den to see midday dreams. And you stay alone versus a Mesozoic monster. Two failing eyes against thousands of eyes. Two hands and two legs against six legs and two wings. One mind against inhuman speed of reaction. A flimsy weapon, a product of your species’ culture and industry, trembles in your sweat-sticky palm. Even the sun is not your friend today; heat makes those monsters even more agile while turning you into a wheezing jelly. Sun flashes dart into your eyes from all glossy surfaces like kamikaze terrorists, and your vision is full of blind spots. You blink hard as if it were of any use, and keep on listening to the air. There it goes! To the left, right from the floodlight of the sun! You plummet there, the weapon at the ready, your eyes narrowed. A black body flickers up and right; you strike without aiming and miss it, of course. And for the second time, and for the third time, too. Meanwhile, the monster spurts too high, out of your reach, still in the same sector, though. Its prehistoric brain can’t fathom why the air can be as hard as glass, keeping it from flying away towards the sun’s haze and seemingly close treetops. In those couple of seconds, you demonstrate to the enemy what your ancestors have gained by passing through the millstones of evolution. You can’t fly like the monster, but you can jump above your head by using the surroundings to your advantage. So, you shift a stool closer, climb it, and the rolled newspaper in your hand reaches the freakin’ buzzin' fly on the window and crushes it dead. One to nothing! That’s when the stool under your feet sways with the momentum of a too-vigorous strike, your bare sole slips, and while falling to the floor, you correct yourself, one to one.