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        Green.  The illustrious color of nature.  In a three-sixty-degree circle, grass stretched into uncertainty.  Dendromurines popped their heads in and out of the ground, surveying the eternity, recognizing their own mortality.  Unbeknownst to them, Marsh, a young girl, lay spread out on the ground.  As clouds loomed overhead, she digested infinity.
        One dendromurine fully emerged from his cavernous burrow and took off at rapid speed across the field.  But before reaching his neighboring safe haven, a hawk grasped his neck, lifting him high above the earth.  For a split second, the dendromurine felt euphoria, before the death grip of the hawk sent him spiraling into the abyss.  Marsh saw a pirate ship in a nearby cloud.
        An army ant, hard at work, lifted a speck of bread off the ground and onto his back.  He trudged along the ground, never wavering in his devotion to the colony.  But as the closest entrance came into view, he stopped and dropped the crumb.  Quickly, he broke a piece from the morsel and tasted it, finding it quite intoxicating.  He took a second bite, oblivious of the four pairs of eyes watching him.  The trap door spider had taken him, begrudgingly, before he’d finished devouring the bread.  Marsh giggled at the bunny eating a carrot, portrayed by several cumulus and a nimbus cloud above.
        The humble bee dropped down upon a fertile orchid, sucking up her nectar and dropping pollen.  The orchid thanked her for the present, but the bee, still diligent, took off for other sights.  When she set down again, she searched for nectar, finding none.  Yet the smell of nectar remained ever-abundant.  Desperate, she searched the entire mouth of the flower, realizing too late the secret.  She had landed in a Nepenthes thorellii.  She didn’t even have a chance to scream.  Marsh wondered over the existence of God, with such a complex world at her disposal.
        Another orchid mused over the caterpillar which had earlier spun a cocoon upon one of her lower stems.  The cocoon was becoming almost too heavy for her to hold, yet she struggled to keep it upright.  Now, the cocoon moved.  And from the cocoon, a Swallowtail appeared.  Its translucent yellow wings sparkled in the sun, as its little black beads for eyes took in the world.  The orchid smiled, realizing that her labor had produced a male butterfly, which moments later would fall prey to a Cattle Egret.  Marsh played a blade of grass between her hands like a kazoo.
        A cute rabbit, sans carrot, winked at Marsh before taking off across the grass. She leaned back and allowed the sun to shine down, while the rabbit bound hither and yon, elated at freedom.  His freedom was short lived, finding himself in a death grip with a young Rock Python.  The rabbit kicked and thrashed, but to no avail.  Within minutes, he was imprisoned in the lower half of a snake’s digestive tract.  There, he’d remain for several days more.  Marsh dreamt of lions and toucans.
        One wildebeest wandered from the group, curious.  He moved toward a bush, slowly and with caution.  A beetle popped out, momentarily startling him.  Shaking his head at his foolishness, he turned around.  In his peripheral, he saw a pair of eyes appear from the bush.  He turned back and was face to face with a sneering lioness.  Before he could warn the others, his throat was ripped out.  He fell to the ground, only having enough time to see the rest of the pack take off after his fleeing friends.  Marsh slept deeply and soundly.
        She woke with a start, as the night rapidly approached.  “Darkness is in full view.”
        She stood and passed by two Black Spitting Fat-Tailed scorpions, locked in an epic battle.  The two males snapped and swiped at each other, until one remained the victor, and one became dinner for other lower life forms.  Marsh marveled at the sunset in the west.
        An owl snatched at a few ice rats, desperately racing back to the colony.  With persistence, he was able to pull up a large adult ice rat for his children and himself for dinner.  He ripped apart the meal and spread the plenty to his children, as if they were royalty in a feasting hall.  While distracted, the other ice rats took this opportunity to scramble home, like soldiers at a Gatling gun’s reloading.  Marsh brushed away a falling leaf, while making for home.
        The Rupell Pipistrelles checked its path on sonar, finding it clear.  This bat found the area ahead heavy with herbage, diving lower to go under the cumbrous plant life.  Before finishing his swoop underneath a nearby branch, a well hidden Goliath Bird-eater Tarantula grabbed the bat, throwing both to the musty, dense jungle floor.  Before the bat could recompose himself, the large spider had him poisoned.  Marsh bypassed the dangerous overgrowth of trees on a well beaten path.
        A Baobab began to feel concerned.  He’d felt pain for quite a while.  Inside, fire spread through his limbs.  Every branch felt like it was filled with lava from nearby Oku.  From everywhere, he heard little voices yell “Timber!”  Too late, he realized he had a colony of termites.  They had finally decayed his whole backbone.  Invariably, he felt his weight pulled west, and he fell with a loud thud.  Termites ran from everywhere in his wood.  He swore as things went black.  Marsh checked for flesh eating fish before crossing the river near home.
        As she reached the other side, she spotted a log.  Her head cocked to the side, but suddenly, her eyes popped open.  She turned to run, but her left calf was caught and ripped.  She fell to the ground, partially still in the water.  She tried to reach a standing position, but the crocodile had her leg.  He pulled her toward the water, but she held firm to a nearby tree.  As the blood drained from the cuts on her leg, however, she lost her grasp and was pulled into the water.  Before she could be suffocated, her loss of blood stopped her heart.  The crocodile realized her size was much too large for a meal.  He ate what he dared and left the rest for her mother and father to identify two weeks later.
        Two things are universally true: Death is the destination and Darwin’s the guide.