Orchid Pond Hawaii

An online book by Carson Clippard

Remember what the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) said about life? In his opinion, it is "nasty, brutish, and short." Anone who reads Carson Clippard's Orchid Pond, Hawaii can only add, "But with flashes of beauty."

Orchid Pond Hawaii describes the daily life-and-death encounters between the various inhabitants living in and around this rainforest pond. Looking unblinkingly at the predatory sexual and food-hunting practices of these creatures, the book details the "nasty, brutish, and short" lives of the many animals-from moths to chameleons-living in this pollution-free environment.

Forget the picture-postcard view of Hawaii. Postcards don't depict the stark reality of wildlife in Hawaii where, as elsewhere, animals must constantly hunt and kill to survive. At Orchid Pond killing is dispassionate, so much so that a mother frog can absentmindedly eat her own offspring.

As the author ironically notes, some good may come of this infanticide: "The baby toad joins twenty-six of his brothers and sisters in his own mother's belly, to perhaps become the source of black energy for the next generation of tar-baby tadpoles to find cool beginnings in the waters of Orchid Pond." But this is only the start of the faceless terror that goes on minute-after-minute in the spot so innocuously named Orchid Pond.

After mating with the tiny male orchid spider, the female of the species jabs him with a needle-like device in her mouth, her venom permanently immobilizing him. Later, when she grows hungry, she will inject him with another solvent, causing him to dissolve into a tasty bodybag of sweet nectar.

The above notwithstanding, the female creatures of Orchid Pond can be self-sacrificing, although at the same time sacrificing others. As the author tells it, some boys encircle a small group of scorpions with a lighter-fluid fire. The mother scorpion frantically scampers around the inside of the flaming circle, seeking a way of escape. Finding none, she returns to the center of the circle, where she stings each of her brood to death so that the flames can torture them no longer. Then, as the flames close around her, she stings the life from her own body by piercing her eye.

But life at Orchid Pond is not quite so unremittingly grim as these acts would suggest. There is beauty, however fleeting.

The author writes: "Jade-green rain-forest vines called lianas rope themselves around and through the limbs of gigantic flame trees towering high above the pond; clinging tightly to the limbs, knots, and trunks of ancient trees, fragile orchids of stunning beauty hang in profuse waterfalls of blooms."

Flashes of beauty are set beside the suicidal terror of a frantic mother scorpion. It is no wonder that for the reader of Orchid Pond, Hawaii that flower will never again suggest just the senior prom.