Spy Wolf Et Al

  Deep into last night on into the early morning hours, I'd fallen asleep watching TV and woke to a program featuring animal life in the wild, as documented through the eyes, literally,  of a spy animal of the same species.  There were replicas of a meerkat, wolf, crocodile, prairie dog, and others, including at least one animal I was unfamiliar with. The premise was to fashion a lifelike-looking semblance of the type of animal to be studied and to secrete that spy-animal in the breed's natural habitat.  The tribe or herd or flock would accept the spy, and the camera in the eye of the spy would record the  details of happenings in the real lives of the animals.
   In each case, the spy animal underwent thorough inspection by its mates, in some cases seemingly accepted and in others discounted and eventually ignored.  And that's where a somewhat unsettling feeling set in, alone in the middle of the night.  The spy animals were fairly accurate portrayals, some more than others and a few quite cute.  The thought went through my mind as to how such a project gets funded, who does the crafting, the delivery, etc.  Who could ever think to prepare for this type of vocation. All questions with no answers, not in the middle of the night.  But that was incidental.  What disturbed me was the memory of National Geographic Specials from several years ago that showed nature at its most brutal.  I vividly recall seeing a mother lion with 3 adorable baby cubs, and a male lion, I think it was the father, ferociously  attacked and killed the cubs, right on camera, while the narrator voiced the event.
    So a part of me expected these cute little spy animals to be torn apart, and even though I knew they were fake, I didn't want to see it, not in the middle of the night.  But this was a gentler show, and the camera moved away before anything violent occurred.  I had the feeling at least a few of the spies were torn to shreds, but not in sight of the camera.  Maybe they plucked out its eye.
    There seemed to be a moral or at least a theme:   All the animal life portrayed depended on others in their society.  The relationships were mutually helpful.  So all went well.
    I fell back asleep in the early morning.  In a dream that seemed like real life, I was sitting at the computer, as usual, and I saw an ant. I stepped on it, and suddenly there was a virtual army of ants surrounding the stomped ant. I started to step on them too, but they scurried away.  Then out of nowhere appeared a large ant, large meaning the size of my shoe.  I stood back and watched while it grabbed the still struggling stomped ant by its neck and dragged it away.  I vowed to call the exterminator .  Again.