Collaborative Criticism #3

Copper sulfate pentahydrate (26% solution) was applied to a 40,000+ gallon concrete pond complex at between 5-7 gallons per surface acre of 4 foot depth. The goal was to eliminate floating algae that resembled turds.

Days later the devastation to the pond snail population was apparent. A thick foul smelling protein foam coated the surface of pond # 3 with hundreds of tiny floating empty shells.

The pond snails were dead, along with the dragonfly nymphs.

The man who might be charged with this mundane collateral damage, the poisoner, was really just another vital mechanism in a much greater network of looping and crossing Rube-Goldberg machines.

__________

Miles upland, in the K range, a great plastic wall protects the last tribes of a dying species, Achantinella fuscobasis, from rats and rose colored wolf snails.

The woman in charge of preserving these lives in a shell counts them all to the rhythmic beats of another Rube-Goldberg network, whose modular causal chains necessarily involve a helicopter, the Smithfield Foods plant and the memory of a fossilized Ammonite.

I’m doing these on Saturdays instead ... so will give new prompt tomorrow.

Reply to Nils Loc Not sure what this is? It’s less than 500 words and seems truncated. More poetical than philosophical.

What was the intent?

Reply to I like sushi

What do you mean you don't know what it is? You tell me Professor Sushi. What you see is what you get, a fragment. I won't participate anymore sense I'm unlikely to write as much as required.

It is a juxtaposition of two absurd scenarios which are fact based for the most part, one about accidentally killing snails and the other about saving them.

The Rube-Goldberg machine is suppose to introduce a sense of absurd causal determinism which involves as much of the universe as it can be imagined to involve.

Ideally there would be some illustration of the pointlessness of either saving a dying species or accidentally killing an invasive one, in light of what gives rise to these actions.

Reply to Nils Loc Explaining this in the text would’ve helped. Maybe some other people knew what you were talking about, or inferred enough from it, but I didn’t.

The one week limit is mostly for me. I didn’t have time to do one this week but I’ll try and throw something out here later.

Whether or not you post for fun, practice or critique I think 500 words is a reasonable request for those that wish to offer critique (I don’t own the site and there are no rules so post away if you wish).