If you have seen accounts of animal society, behaviors, and the ecosystems they live in, you may have had a strange realization. We are not so different from them. Not just in biological needs like food or sex, but in all of our various strategies and interactions. The structure of our society and the games we play are in so many ways simply the laws of the jungle, played out in towering hives of concrete and steel. For better or for worse.
Rodrigo was a cockroach of a man. Greasy, skittering and shifty, he spent his days lurking in a corner of the office with antennae flicking back and forth across a computer screen. His bulging eyes were constantly glued to an assortment of social media and video streaming sites, only flicking away long enough to glance up at approaching threats.
The insect-man had an astonishing brazenness about him. He was the roach that stands defiantly in the middle of your kitchen, daring you to try and come smash it. If you ever had to work with him, he became the roach standing in your lunch. With a bug-eyed expression that was somehow simultaneously blank, obstinate and oily he would refuse any bit of work someone attempted to pin on him. Nibbling away at his host’s food, he was content to passively take small pieces of credit for work that was completed, despite a lack of any real contributions.
You would think that, working in one of the largest professional services firms in the world, this insect would be devoured in an instant. But Rodrigo survived. He had a process. His niche in this ecosystem.
I had found this roach in my lunch in the past. It was an unpleasant experience, culminating in a tense stand-off between myself and the bug. In the end I was able to successfully flick him out of my food, leaving me with a greasy feeling and a lunch that needed to be pruned of bits touched by bug legs. My policy thereafter was to use all the tools and tricks at my disposal to avoid ever seeing Rodrigo near one of my meals again. It was unpleasant to see the bug on the kitchen floor, but if it was not standing in my food, then it could be ignored.
There were, however, far worse things in the jungle than slimy bugs.
A bug is irksome, troublesome and disgusting. A snake? A wolf? A lion? They would pin you down and eat you alive without a second thought.
Angela Yu was a snake. Not a small garter snake, but a long, lithe pit viper. The glossy leather of her Hermes bag glistened like the skin of a sleek and dangerous reptile. The tapping of her thin Prada heels approaching was as alarming as the sudden rhythm of a rattler flicking out its deadly hiss. Angela didn’t need loud displays to assert her dominance. Every creature knew that if you crossed the snake, you were going to need the strength of a lion, or the cunning of a fox to survive.
★ ★ ★ ★
It was a typical Wednesday afternoon. The air was buzzing with the energy of fifty-odd different animals going about their business.
The office’s open floor plan, designed to mimic that of a small creative agency, ended up creating an effect more similar to open season at a game reserve. Picture a kiddie pool. Cute and fun when filled with small, colorful fish. When filled with piranhas, it was the stuff of nightmares.
I sat perched on a high chair in the corner of the office, staring at yet another PowerPoint deck. My laptop, extended display screen and favorite desk-plant were positioned in front of me to create a screen between myself and the rest of the space. I smiled slightly looking down at my raised desk with its various trinkets and bobbles. The red and gold Chinese dragon charm looked particularly nice dangling from the tall desk lamp. My roost was the best in the office.
I was pulled from my musings by a wave of tension radiating from somewhere to my left. A slightly strained voice was squawking out a string of unintelligible words. I cocked my head to the side and glanced sidelong in its direction. It was the ostrich.
Abigail Farnsworth might have been pretty in another life. She had long blonde hair and a bone structure that had the potential to support a pleasant face. Years of endless late nights at the office, intense stress, and a diet that consisted mainly of alcohol and junk food had, however, ruined any chances of that. As she was, her skin hung loosely around her neck and arms, discolored and rough like ostrich leather. Abigail was in her early 30’s, but appeared easily a decade beyond that. Her constant state of frantic anxiety made her highly unpleasant company.
The bird looked particularly frazzled today. She was staring wide-eyed with a look of frustration and disbelief at the thing in front of her. The roach. He sat hunched in his desk, bug-eyed and greasy as ever. His eyes were locked on hers, mouth set in the disgusting half-smile that he often displayed as he shat on someone’s food.
“I just don’t understand why you can’t do this. This one simple thing,” Abigail squawked in a stiff voice.
“I’m busy. Got too much else going on right now,” replied the roach with an air of finality.
I had no love for either of these creatures, but of the two, the twitchy bird was somewhat more tolerable. I almost pitied her seeing her struggle with the roach like this. She would never catch him. He skittered far too quickly for her frantic pecking to ever land more than the slightest tap.
Their tense exchange continued for another half-minute with little progress. This was one of the roach’s favorite strategies. Wait for his pursuers to tire themselves out with dead-end exchanges. Exhaust and frustrate until they gave up and left him to nibble on their food undisturbed.
Just as I was losing interest in this predictable cat-and-mouse game, an unsettling sound caught my ear.
Tss-ts, tss-ts, tss-ts.
The snake.
Despite being several rows of desks away, her trajectory was obvious. She approached from behind the bird with smooth, rhythmic steps. Her pitch-black eyes were locked on the roach.
“What’s going on here?” Her tone made it clear that she knew exactly what was going on.
If you have ever seen footage of a spider stalking a particularly revolting and juicy insect, you will understand my sentiments upon seeing this scene unfold in front of me. Morbid fascination and excitement. One horror opening its jaws wide to swallow another. I felt a greasy half-smile of my own begin to spread across my face.
“It’s nothing, just catching up on some stuff for an event coming up. It’s all sorted now,” the roach shot out quickly with an air of contrived casualness.
“Well actually it is something,” Abigail shot back, “we need to get this presentation deck sorted before the workshop, and there’s no way I can do that, plus prepare all of the content that myself and Simon are going to cover in the three deep-dive sessions within the next twenty-four hours.”
Angela’s eyes had not moved from the roach.
“Well isn’t that something you should be taking care of?” she said to him so measured and evenly that it nearly made me wince.
The roach’s smug self-assurance was draining away, “I’m too busy right now. I’ve got two other events coming up that I’ve got to get ready for.”
The snake fixed him with an evil simile, “Huh, really? You’re too busy? So what exactly have you been working on for the last two days?”
“A lot of stuff. I’ve had to prepare everything for the afternoon tea today, and the movie night tomorrow.”
Angela let out a humorless chuckle, “That should have taken, what? Thirty minutes all together?” As she spoke, her eyes narrowed to black razor blades and the corners of her mouth curled up into a contemptuous sneer.
Before he could reply she continued, “Actually, I don’t think you’re busy at all. I think you’re wasting time playing on your computer.” Her voice was so icy and devoid of emotion that she sounded like a witch calmly reading a book of horrifying facts to small children.
“Honestly, I’m amazed that you can sit here like this every day, pretending to work while everyone else has to pick up after you. And when you do manage to get around to making something, honestly it’s just shit. I’ve seen better work from a lot of our interns,” another icy chuckle punctuated the condemnation.
The air around this morbid spectacle had become still. I realized that everyone within earshot had stopped what they were doing to listen in. The tension in the air was so thick that it felt like the entire scene might spontaneously combust.
“I… I mean, I…” the roach fumbled to find some response. He looked like a bug caught in the mouth of a predator. Already dead, with legs working and twitching in a hopeless effort to escape.
“I think you should do that deck now so Abigail doesn’t have to end up working until midnight again to pick up your work,” Angela finished for him.
I knew the snake well, and it was obvious she didn’t really care if Abigail worked herself to death. As long as the roach died first, she would slide home quite content.
“Yeah, OK. I’ll get on it now,” Rodrigo responded in one of the most weak and defeated voices I’ve ever heard.
Angela smiled, glancing once to Abigail, then back to the roach before turning and tapping away.
“Send it through to me as soon as you’ve got it done and I’ll take a look to make sure everything’s in order,” Abigail said matter-of-factly before turning and hurrying back to her desk. To her credit, she didn’t waste any time to gloat over her victory. Perhaps she was just too focused on staying alive.
Rodrigo sat twitching like the gory remains of a smashed bug. Everyone around gradually returned to their work, their blood-lust happily satiated for the day.
I turned my eyes back towards my own computer. Flipping through the partially finished PowerPoint, I reflected on poor, disgusting Rodrigo’s fate.
He was finished. Not today, and probably not tomorrow, but this was the beginning of the end for him. With his guts ripped open and laid bare for the whole horde to see, he would not survive long. Others would come to pick at his twitching corpse until there was nothing left. Such was the law of the jungle.
The weak are meat and the strong do eat.
End
James B. Cutchin 