Woven

Woven had not always seen the strands.

When she was small, she watched one animal at a time, and liked some better than others. She thought foxes were mean for chasing rabbits and thought the meadow would be nicer without them. She told her friends so, quite loudly.

Then, one summer, the foxes in the valley grew fewer. Woven expected the meadow to be happier. Instead, the rabbits multiplied until they nibbled the grass down to the soil, and the grasshoppers went hungry, and so did the frogs, and the whole meadow looked thin and tired.

She sat in her web, puzzled and a bit ashamed of what she'd said.

An old badger who had watched the valley for many years came by. "You looked at the fox as a villain," he said, "but a fox isn't being mean. It's eating, the way it's built to. And by eating some rabbits, it keeps the grass alive for everyone else." He pointed his snout across the meadow. "Nothing out there lives alone. Every animal is a strand. Pull one, and you tug the rest."

When she was old enough, Woven came to WildLens, because it was a place for watching animals carefully and without judging them.

The mentor met her at the hide. "What do you bring?"

"Strings," said Woven. "So people can see the connections between animals, not just the animals."

The mentor smiled. "You belong here."

Theo came back with a question from his science class. "If all the frogs in our pond disappeared," he read from his notebook, "what would happen to the heron and the grasshoppers?"

Woven passed him a pair of scissors with a smile. "Let's find out on the strings," she said.

Theo snipped the frog strands. He looked at the heron's picture, now with one fewer string. "The heron loses food," he said. "So it might go hungry, or fly to another pond." Then he looked at the grasshopper strand, which no longer led to anything. "And the grasshoppers don't get eaten by frogs any more. So there'd be more grasshoppers." He frowned. "And more grasshoppers would eat more grass."

"Keep going," said Woven.

"So less grass," said Theo slowly. "Which affects everything that eats grass." He looked up, amazed. "One missing animal changes nearly everything."

"That's the web," said Woven, warm and pleased. And she tied the frog strands back, carefully, one by one.