a matter of course and then took over the vegetable patch nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.” This is especially evident in the reference to the carrots being “beheaded” which provides an appropriate transition into the next stanza.The third stanza is the inevitable “fall from grace” as our speaker has finally “taken off the gloves” and resorts to the vengeance of cold steel. The speaker utters one last phrase of motivation as he/she eerily takes pleasure in holding the tool of his nemesis’ destruction. “The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22, the bullets’ neat noses.” The killer now takes a moment to lament on his/her course of action, acknowledging that her pacifism is a thing of the past; that he/she was once comparable to Darwin and his pension for non-violence. However, this does little to dissuade he/she from swiftly taking the life of the pests. “I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing, now drew a bead on the little woodchuck’s face. He died down in the everbearing roses.” This stanza marked the turning point of the narrative as our speaker has been pushed beyond their boundaries into an unfamiliar realm of pleasure. A side of them has been exposed that has remained dormant for what appears to be the duration of their life. It is now a newfound sensation that has thrilled them beyond expectation. This thrill continues to manifest itself in the following stanza as well.“Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.” Here, another life is taken just minutes after the first. Coincidentally or not, the speaker chose to kill her while eating in irony to his/her very motivation. The blood lust is steadily increasing within the speaker and...
