By a pond, in a pit, under the dirt, lay ten eggs, soft and small and filthy.
They were dug up and eaten by a skunk, along with two other nearby batches of eggs.
Another nest was unearthed and eaten by two crows.
Two OTHER nests hatched successfully into coin-sized little turtles that struggled free of the suffocating earth, only to be devoured by a very lucky passing fox.
One more nest hatched and saw all of its turtles make it to the water, where nine-tenths of them were consumed by fish. The only surviving turtle dodged fish for years, grew to adulthood, mated, and on its way to dig its nest crossed a road and was hit by a car.
This is how many troubled species work, most of the time.
***
In a tree, in a bough, in a woven basket, sat five eggs, speckled and small and relatively secure. The whole world lay ahead of them.
One came out slightly crushed and began to smell bad before very much time had passed. Mother ejected it from the nest with a few sharp flicks of her head.
One was doing very well indeed until a hungry raccoon came upon the nest just after sunrise and stuffed it into its face before being bombarded eyeball-first by Mother forced it into a hasty retreat.
One hatched and died right away for some reason. Mother ejected it from the nest with a few flicks of her head.
One hatched, grew, thrived, and became covered in feathers. It then left the nest to practice flight further and was devoured by a cat in a moment of inattentiveness.
One hatched, grew, thrived, fledged, and in the great dawning day of its new life, was picked off by a hawk while trying to find twigs to make its own nest.
This is how most successful species work, most of the time.
***
In a puddle, in an old tire, in a junk yard, sat a hundred eggs.
Half of them were wiped out by overflow caused by a light storm.
Half of them were devoured by dragonfly larva
Half of them were consumed by a passing swallow on leaving the water and taking flight.
Half of them were eaten by bats that evening.
And half of the leftovers from THAT were eaten on the wing by adult dragonflies.
Of the remaining three, one never managed to lay any eggs, one almost did but was eaten by a duck while laying, and the last one laid a hundred eggs.
This is how most very successful species work, most of the time.
***
In a bassinet, under a blanket, in a home sat a baby.
It grew up and learned to talk. It grew up and learned to walk.
It got bigger and learned math and reading and writing.
It got bigger and learned about society and grades.
It got bigger and learned about owning a vehicle and a home and making money.
Then it designed, planned, constructed and sold a swathe of suburban sprawl that consumed the tree and the pond and the house it had grown up in, necessitating and encouraging as aspirational an increasingly-unlikely and unattainable lifestyle organized around and devoted to the personal use of inefficient single-family carbon-emitting vehicles. This was rewarded.
This is how at least one species works. So far.
***
The junk yard got a lot more tires and those tires got a lot more puddles though. So it wasn’t all bad for everybody.