HUMAN VULNERABILITY AND THE
EXPERIENCE OF BEING PREY'I'

Not long ago saltwater crocodiles were consideredwetla,ndS are especially sronning,a, s the waterlilies endangered, as virtually all the mature animals were'shot out of the rivers and lakes of Australia's north by
weave white, pink and blue patterns of dreamlike
commercial hunting. But after twelve' years of protec, ,beauty over the shining towers of thundercloudreflected in their still waters. Yesterday, the waterlilies tion, their numbers were beginning to burgeon. ~and the wonderful birdlife had enticed me 'into a joyous were now the most plentiful of the large animals 'of
afternoon's idyll, as I ventured onto the, East Alligator Kakadu National Park, which preserved a major area of
lagoon for the first time, in a canoe lent by the park ser- their breeding habitat. I was actively involved in thevice. "You can play about on the backwaters," the struggle to keep such places, and for me the crocodile
was - and still is - a potent symbol of the power andranger had said, "but don't go onto the main river channel. The current's too swift, and if you get into trouble, integrity of this place and the incredible richness of i,ts
aquatic habitats.
.there are the crocodiles! Lots ofAfter hours of searching the maze
, them along the river!" I had folof shallow channels in rheswamp.J
lowed his advice carefully, and gluthad been unable to locate the clear
ted myself on the magical beauty
channel leading to the rock art siteand birdlife of the lily lagoons,as shown on the ranger's sketch
untroubled by their crocodiles.
map. When' I pulled my canoe
Today, I had been tempted toacross in driving rain to a rock outrepeat that wonderful experience,crop rising out of the swamp for, adespitethe light drizzle beginning tohasty, sodden lunch, I had experii ' fall as I made my way to the Canoe
enced strongly the unfamiliar sensalaunch site. I set off ona day trip intion of being watched. But I had
search of an Aboriginalrock art site
acrossthe lagoon and up a side channel. But the drizzle never been one for timidity, in my' philosophy or in myhad turned' to rain within a few hours and the magic life. So I decided, rather than return defeated to my
had been lost. At 3S'C, the wet season rains, could be sticky caravan, to explore further a clear, deep channel
experiencedas comfortable and welcome: they were late closer to the river I had travelled some way along theprevious.day,
this year,and the parched land and all its'
The rain squalls and wind were
inhabitants, eagerly awaited their relief. ---------But today in, the rain,' the birds were Val Plumwoodis an Australian growing now, and several times I had toinvisible,the waterlilies were sparse, and scbolar who this year is Profes- pull my canoe over to tip the rainwater 'the lagoon seemed even a little menac- eor of Women'. Studies at the out of it. The channel, soon developed
ing, I noticed now how low the fourteen- StaleUniversityof North Caroli- steep mud banks and many snags, andfoot Canadian canoe sat in the water, . na, Her most recent book is the going was slow. But on beyond thisjust a few incbes of fibreglass between Feminism and the Mostery of section, I found my channel opening up
me and the great saurians, the closest liv- Nature (Routledge, 1993). Tbe but eventually 'petering out, blocked by'ing relaiives 'on earth to the ancient event. described here occurred a large sandy bar. I pushed the canoe
towards the bank, looking around caredinosaurs.
on 5th'February 1985:
NlliE'EARLY wet season, Kakadu's paperbark

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fully before getting out in the shallows and pulling thecanoe up. r would be safe from crocodiles in the canoe, I
had been told, but swimming, and standing or wadingat the water's edge were dangerous. The edge was one of
the crocodile's favourite food-capture places. I saw
nothing, but the feeling of unease that had been therewith me all day intensified.
The rain had eased temporarily, and I picked my way
across the sandbar covered with scattered scrub to see
whatever there was of this puzzle place. As I crested thegently sloping dune, I was shocked to glimpse the muddy
brown waters of the East Alligator River gliding silently
only a hundred yards ahead of me. The channel I had
followed had evidently been an ana branch, and had led
me back to the main river.Nothing stirred along the riverbank, but my attention was caught by the great tumbleof escarpment cliffs away up beyond the stream. One
especially striking rock formation on the skyline, a single
large rock balanced precariously upon a much smaller
one, held my gaze. As I looked, my mutter of uneaseturned to a shout of danger. The strange formation putme sharply in mind of two things: first, of the indigenous
Gagadgu owners of Kakadu, whose advice and permission to come here I had not sought, and second, of the
precariousness of my own life, of human lives. And wellit might have: as a solitary specimen of a major preyspecies of the crocodile, r was standing in one of themost dangerous places on the face of the earth.
I turned decisively to go back the way I had come,with a feeling of relief. I had not reached the rock paintings, [ rationalised, but it was too late to look for themnow. The rock formation presented itself as the te/os ofthe day. I had come, I had seen something interesting,now I could go, home to caravan comfort.

A

s I PULLED the canoe out into the main current,
the torrential rain and wind started up again;
the swelling stream would carry me home thequicker, [ thought. I had not gone more than
five or ten minutes back down the channel when, rounding a bend, I saw ahead of me in midstream what looked
like a floating stick, but one [ did not recall passing on
the way up. As the current bore me towards it, the stickseemed to develop eyes. A crocodile! It is hard to estimate
size from the small nose and eye protrusions the crocodile
in cryptic mode leaves above the waterline, but it did notlook a large one. I was close to it now, but I was notespecially afraid; an encounter would add interest to theday, as with the smallish one we had detoured to examine close up the week before from a ranger's boat.
Although I was paddling to miss the crocodile, ourpaths were strangely convergent. [ saw that it was going
to be close, but was totally unprepared for the great
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blow I felt against the side of the canoe as I was almost
past it. Again it came, again and again, now from behind
my head, shuddering through the flimsy craft. I paddled
furiously, but the blows continued. The unheard of washappening, the canoe was under attack, the crocodile infull pursuit! For the first time, it came to me fully that I
was prey. I must somehow get out of the canoe, or risk
being capsized or pulled into the deeper water of midchannel.
The bank now presented a high, steep face of slippery
mud, difficult to scale. There was only one obvious
avenue of escape, a paperbark tree with many low
branches near the muddy bank wall. I made the split-second decision to try to leap into the lower branches andclimb to safety. I steered the canoe over to the bank by
the paperbark, and stood up ready to jump. At the same
instant, the crocodile rushed up alongside the canoe, andits beautiful, flecked golden eyes looked straight intomine. Perhaps [could bluff it, drive it away, as I had readof British tiger hunters doing. I waved my arms, shouted"Go away!" (We're British here.) The golden eyes glinted
with interest. I tensed for the jump, and leapt. Before myfoot even tipped the first branch, I had a blurred, incredulous vision of great toothed jaws bursting from thewater, as I was seized between the legs in a red-hot pincer
grip, and whirled into the suffocating wet darkness
below.
The course and intensity of terminal thought patterns in near-death experiences can tell us much about
our frameworks of subjectivity. A subjectively-centred
framework capable of sustaining action and purpose,must, I think, view the world "from the inside", structured so as to sustain the concept of an invincible, or atleast a continuing, self; we remake the world in that way
as actionable, investing it with meaning, reconceiving it
as sane, survivable, amenable to hope and resolution.
The lack of fit between this subject-centred version, in
which one's own death is unimaginable, and an "outside" version of the world comes into play in extreme
moments. In its final, frantic attempts to protect itself
from the knowledge of vulnerability and impending
death that threatens the normal, subject-centred framework, the mind can instantaneously fabricate terminal
doubt of extravagant, Cartesian proportions: this is notreally happening, this is a nightmare, from which I willsoon awake. This desperate delusion split apart as [ hitthe water. In that flash, when my consciousness had toknow the bitter certainty of its end, I glimpsed the world
for the first time "from the outside", as no longer myworld, as raw necessity, an unrecognisably bleak orderwhich would go on without me, indifferent to my will
and struggle, to my life as to my death. This near-deathknowledge, the knowledge of the survivor and of the
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prey, has some strange fruits, not all of
before I was again submerged in thethem bitter.
terror of the third death roll. This roll,a solitary specimen of a' like the others, stopped eventually,
Few of those who have experienced the crocodile's death roll have
and we came up again in the same
major prey species of the
lived to describe it. It is, essentially,
place as before, next to the sandpaper
crocodile, Iwas standing in fig branch.
indescribable, an experience beyond
words of total terror; total helplessI knew I was growing weaker, but
one of the most dangerous
ness, total certainty, experienced with
Icould see the crocodile taking a longplaces on the face of
undivided mind and body, of a terrible
time to kill me this way, tearing me
theearth.
death in the swirling depths. The crocslowly apart. It seemed to be playing
odile's breathing and heart metabowith me, like a huge growling cat withlism is not suited to prolonged
a torn mouse. I did not imagine that I
struggle, so the roll is an intense initial
could survive, so great seemed its
burst of power designed to overcome the surprised vic- anger and so great its power compared to mine, but I
tim's resistance quickly. Then it is merely a question of prayed for it to finish me quickly. I decided to try toholding the now feebly struggling prey under the waterprovoke it, to attack it with my free hands. Feeling backa while for an easy finish to the drowning job. The roll behind me along the head which still held my body in its
was a centrifuge of whirling, boiling blackness, whichjaws, I encountered two lumps. Thinking I had its eye
seemed about to tear my limbs from my body, driving
sockets, [ jabbed my thumbs into them with all mywater irresistibly' into my bursting lungs. It lasted for might. They slid into warm, unresisting holes (which
eternity, beyond endurance, but as I seemed all but fin- must have been the ears, or perhaps the nostrils), andthe crocodile did not even startle. In despair, [ resumed
ished, the rolling suddenly stopped. My feet touchedbottom, and my head rose, broke the surface. Spluttermy grasp of the branch, dreading death by slow torture.
ing, coughing, Isucked at air, amazed to find myself still Once again, after a time [ felt the crocodile jaws relax.
alive. The crocodile still had me in its pincer grip
[ knew now I must break the pattern. Not back into
between the legs, and the water came just up to my the paperbark; up the impossible, slippery mud bankchest. As we rested together, I had only just begun to was the only way. Ithrew myself at it with all my failingweep for the prospects of my mangled body, before the strength, scrabbling with my hands for a grip, failing,
crocodile pitched me suddenly into a second death roll. sliding, falling back to the bottom, to the waiting crocoWhen the whirling terror stopped again (this time. dile. A second try, this time almost making it before sliding back, breaking my slide two-thirds down by
perhaps it had not lasted quite so long), I surfaced
grabbing a tuft of grass. I hung there, exhausted, defeatagain, still in the crocodile's grip, next to a stout branchof a large sandpaper fig growing in the water. (Strong ed. I can't make it. It'/1 just have to come and get me, I
saviour tree, how can I thank you?) I reached out andthought. It seemed a shame, somehow, after all I had
held onto the branch with all my strength, vowing to let been through. The grass tuft began to give way-To stop
the crocodile tear me apart rather than throw me again
myself sliding further, I instinctively jammed my fingers
into that spinning, suffocating hell. For the first time I into the soft mud, and it supported me. This was the
became aware of the low growling sound issuing from clue I needed for survival. With my last strength, I began
the crocodile's throat, as if it was very angry. I braced
to climb up the bank, pushing my fingers into the mud
myself against the branch ready for another roll, but
to hold my weight. I reached the top and stood up,
incredulous. I was alive! I felt a great surge of elation.
after a short time felt the crocodile's jaws suddenly
relax. Unbelievably, I was free. With all my strength, I
HE ESCAPE from the crocodile was not the end
used the branch to pull myself away from it, dodging
around the back of the fig tree, and, again avoiding theby any means of my struggle to survive. I wasalone, severly injured, and many miles fromforbidding mud bank, tried once more the only apparent avenue of escape, to climb into the paper bark tree.
help. During the struggle with the crocodile, I
As in the repetition of nightmare, when the dreamer
was so focused on survival that the pain and the injuries
is stuck fast in some monstrous pattern of destruction
had not really registered. But as I took my first urgent
impervious to will and endeavour, so the horror of my steps away from the vicinity of the crocodile, I knew
first attempt was exactly repeated. As I leapt again into
something was wrong with my leg. "The bastard's brothe same branch, the crocodile again propelled itself ken my knee," was my first thought. I did not wait,from the water, seizing me once more, this time roundhowever, to inspect the damage, but took off away fromthe upper left thigh. I briefly felt a hot sensation there
the crocodile in the direction of the ranger station.

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After I had put more distance between me and the probably have Paddy Pallin's incredibly tough walk shortscrocodile and felt a bit safer, I stopped to find out whatto thank for the fact that the groin injuries were not as
was wrong with my leg. Now I was aware for the first severe as the leg injuries. I am very lucky that I can stilltime of how serious my wounds were. I did not remove walk well, and have lost little of my previous capacities.
my clothing to see the damage to the groin area inflicted But Lady Luck (or Mother Necessity) shows here, as
by the first hold. What I could see was bad enough. The
usual, her inscrutable face: was I lucky to survive, Or
left thigh hung open, bits of fat, tendon and muscle show- unlucky to have been attacked in the first place?
ing, and a sick, numb feeling suffused my entire body. I
The wonder of being alive after being held, quite litertore up some of my clothing to try and bind the wounds
ally, in the jaws of death has never entirely left me. For
up, made a tourniquet for the thigh, then staggered on, the first year, the experience Qfexistence as an unexpected
thinking only of getting back to the ranger station. Still blessing cast a golden glow over my life, despite theelated from my escape, I imagined myself, spattered withinjuries and the pain. The glow has slowly faded, butblood and mud, lurching sensationally into the station. I some of the gratitude for life it left will always be there,
had gone some distance before I realised with a sinking even if I remain unsure whom I should thank for my life
heart that I had crossed the swamp above the station in (perhaps first my most immediate helper, the sandpaper
the canoe, and that without it I could not get back to the fig). The sense of gratitude was the gift of that searing
station under my own steam. Perhaps I would die out
flash of near-death knowledge, the glimpse "from the outhere after all.
side" of that unimaginably alien world from which theI realised I would have to rely on being found by a self as centring observer is absent.
search party. But I could maximise my chances by moving
downstream towards the swamp edge about three kiloHERE REMAIN many puzzles about the events,
metres away. I was still elated at my escape: at least I now
puzzles both social and biological; for example,
had a chance of survival. I had recently been reading aabout the reasons for the attack on the canoe
book which mentioned how soldiers in the First World
itself, which is unusual in crocodile lore, andWar had been able to walk quite long distances with
about the size of the crocodile. It has always been difficult
severe injuries, and had survived. If they could do it, so for me to estimate its size; for most of the attack it was
could I, and there was nothing better to do. Whenever I either only partly visible,or had hold of me from behind,lay down to rest, the pain seemed even worse. I struggled and estimating its size was in any case not foremost on
on, through driving rain, shouting for mercy from the sky, my mind. The press estimate of fourteen feet, which theyapologising to the angry crocodile, calling out my repen- somehow arrived at and published widely some five days
tance to this, its place, for the fault of my intrusion. I before I made any sort of statement, was I think certainly
came to a flooded tributary, and had to make a large an overestimate, since my glimpse of the partly subupstream detour to find a place where I could cross it in merged crocodile next to the fourteen-foot canoe suggestmy weakened state.
ed that it was not as long as the canoe. But if the press
My considerable bush experience now stood me in had an interest in exaggerating the size of the crocodile,
good stead, kept me on course (navigating was second the park service, which feared legal liability, had an internature), and practised endurance stopped me losing heart.
est in minimising it; neither group was interested in my
But as I neared the swamp above the ranger station after views on the matter, as the only witness. Thus some parka journey of several hours, I began to black out, and had service pronouncements have claimed that it was only ato crawl the final distance to its edge. I could do no more very small crocodile, a claim I do not think fits the facts.
for myself; I selected a spot, and lay there in the gathering
The park service speculates that the crocodile may
dusk to await what would come. I did
have been a young male evicted fromnot expect a search party to arrive until
breeding territory and perhaps embatthe following day, and doubted I could
tled
by other crocodiles. Their theory is
I leapt again into thepossibly last the night.
that it engaged with my canoe after asame branch, the crocodile
In the end I was found in time, andcollision in mistake for one of thesesurvived against many odds, thanks to again propelled itself from the older aggressive crocodiles. But froma combination of the ranger's diligence, water, seizing me once more,
my perspective there are some probmy own perseverance, and great goodlems in this account. The crocodile
this time round the upper
fortune. A similar combination of good
most likely observed the passage of myfortune and human care enabled me toleft thigh.
canoe on the way up the channel only aovercome an infection in the leg which
short time before, and it did seem tothreatened amputation or worse. I
intercept the canoe. It is very unlikely

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that it was accidentally struck by the canoe, as the story mode of travel in these waters, I think the decision to ban
assumes and as some press reports claimed; crocodiles are its use may have been wise, if the objective is to eliminate
masters of the water, and this one was expecting me andrisk. Whether and where that is a suitable objective issaw me coming. And why should a small crocodile of less another matter.
than ten feet aggressively attack a much larger, fourteenThe most puzzling question of all, of course, is why itfoot canoe "crocodile", unless we add the assumption
let me go. I think there are several factors here. Since itthat it was bent on suicide? The smaller the crocodile is was not one of the very large crocodiles which can killassumed to be, the more implausible such an attack story with little effort, I was perhaps marginal as prey for it,
becomes. Since crocodiles become sexually mature at given the depth of the water and the way it had hold ofaround ten feet, the park service's minimisation story of a my body. These factors made it hard for it to hold me"self-defence" attack by a "small" evicted crocodile is notunder, and it may have let me go the first rime to try toeven internally consistent. My personal estimate is that it get a better hold, higher up the body. I have no doubt
was probably a medium crocodile in the range of ten to that, had it been able to keep me submerged after the firsttwelve feet which did not know the area well.
roll, there would have been no need for a second. Its failPossible explanations for the anomalous attack are ure to keep me submerged suggests that it was a stray oralmost limitless. Perhaps the crocodile's motives were a newcomer to the area, a crocodile perhaps from thepolitical, against a species-enemy;
crocodile highway of the river, whichhuman beings are a threat to crocodid not know the terrain well and wasdiles, of a more dire kind than croconot familiar with the good drowninghuman species has
diles are to human beings, through the
spots in the shallower channel waters.
elimination of habitat. Perhaps its evolved not only as predator,
My friend the sandpaper fig, who
motives were religious, the thought that but also as prey, and this has allowed me to retain a determined grip
any human being who ventured alone
very likely given us capacities on my own medium, must have also
in such conditions into these waters inplayed a major role. Thus in anotherto scent danger which wesuch a flimsycraft was offering itself as
encounrer in the Territory a few years
a sacrifice to crocodile kind. I thinkearlier than mine, an adult man wascannot now recognise or
myself that the answer may lie in the
saved from a thirteen-foot crocodile
account for.
extreme weather conditions plus thewhich was dragging him off in shallow
ambiguous nature of the canoe and thewater by the determined grip of a little
crocodile's curious relationship to thegirl who held his arm and pulled theland-water boundary. The crocodile is an exploiter of the opposite way. Perhaps, too, the crocodile let go its holdgreat planetary dualism of land and water. As Papua New
because it was tiring; I experienced rhe crocodile through
Guinea writer Vincent Eri suggests in his novel The Croc- the roll as immensely powerful, but that intense burst ofodile, the creature is a magician: its technique is to steal energy cannot be long sustained, and must accomplish its
the Other, the creature of the land, away into its own purpose of drowning fairly quickly. Although my fear
world of the water, where it has complete mastery over that it would slowly tear me to pieces may thus have beenthem. Water is the key to the crocodile's power, and even unwarranted, I still believe that its power was such that inlarge crocodiles rarely attack in the absence of water. If a unobstructed waters it would have finished me.
person in a canoe is perceived by the-crocodile as outside
My advice for others similarly placed is the same asits medium of mastery, they are not seen as prey and are that of Vincenr Eri, who uses the crocodile as a metaphor
safe from attack. If a person is somehow perceived as infor the West in his theme of the relationship of colonisedor potentially in the water, as they might easily be on an
indigenous culture to colonising Western culture. If theearly wet season day of torrential rain when the boundcrocodile-rnagician-coloniser can drag you completely
ariesof the crocodile empire are exploding, they are muchinro its medium, you have little chance; if you can someless than safe.
how manage to retain a hold on your own medium, you
Clearly we must question the assumption, common
may survive.
up until the time of my attack, that canoes are as safe aslarger craft because crocodiles perceive them in the same
NE OF lllE SOCiAl. puzzles is why these sorts
way as outside the crocodile's medium; it may be that atof events create such a media sensation. I
this flimsy end of the boat scale the perceptual balancerecall thinking with relief, as I struggled
can, like the canoe, easily tip towards occupants being
away from the attack site, that I would now
perceived as in the water if conditions, and crocodiles, are have a good excuse for being late with an overdue artiright. Although the canoe is an efficient and delightful cle, and would have an unusual story to tell my little cir-

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AND THEde of friends. I saw the event as a personal incident [ikely to create only minor interest The intense publicity
and media interest in my attack (and other similar
attacks) were an unpleasant surprise, and I see anotherelement of Western dualistic thinking in this and in thesensationalised treatment the media accorded the prey
phenomenon.
In much Aboriginal thinking about death, as Bill
Neidjie's work makes clear, animals, plants and humans
are seen as sharing a common life force, and many interchanges of form between human and animal are conceived. In the West, the human is set apart from nature
as radically other. The threat of boundary breakdown
lies behind Platonic-Christian accounts of death as theseparation of the immaterial, eternal soul as continuing
human essence from an inessential, perishable and animal body. One reason why death is such a horror in theWestern tradition (unless reinterpreted along Platonic
lines so as to maintain the separation) is that it involves
the forbidden mixing of these hyper-separated categories, the dissolution of the sacred-human into the profane-natural. Death in the jaws of a crocodile multiplies
these forbidden boundary breakdowns, combining thedecomposition of the body with active animal triumphover the human species.Crococlilepredation thus threatens the dualistic visions and divisions which justify rational human mastery of the planet. Humans maythemselves be foremost among predators, but they themselves must not be food for worms, and especially theymust not be prey for crocodiles. The disproportionate
outrage with which acts of crocodile predation are greeted, the pogroms and retaliatory slaughters which aim to
wipe the species out of whole regions, are conditionedby this denial of our animality, which may also underlie
many of the difficultiesencountered in maintaining otherfree populations of human-predatory species in the wild.
Another culturally revealing feature of much of themedia coverage was the masculine appropriation of theexperience. This appeared in a number of different
forms, in the exaggeration of the crocodile's size and its
portrayal as an heroic wrestling match, but especially inits sexualisation, The events seem to provide irresistible
material for the pornographic imagination, which
encouraged male identification with the crocodile andinterpretation of the attack as sadistic rape. The reinterpretation of the experience in these sexual terms and its
portrayal in porno films such as Crocodile Blondee
reveal the extent to which sadism is normalised in dominant culture as masculine sexuality. Much of the Australian media seemed to have trouble coming to termswith the idea of women being competent in the bush,but the most advanced expression of this masculinist
mindset was Crocodile Dundee, which was filmed in
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Kakadu not long after my attack. If page-three artides
and Crocodile Blondee eroticised the crococlile as malesadist, Crocodile Dundee took the more respectablecourse of eroticising female passivity and victimhood.
The storyline split the experience along conventionallygendered lines, appropriating the active struggle, escapeand survival parts of the experience for the male heroand representing the passive "victim" parts in the character of an incompetent, irrational and helpless woman
who has to be rescued from the crocodile-sadist (a rivalmale) by the bushman hero. These representations of theexperience reveal the extent to which contemporary culture retains masculinist elements at its core.
Other personal questions and lessons remain for mefrom the experience. Why had I been unable to pay
attention to the signs which said I should turn back,which I experienced as unease? I learnt many personallessons from the event, one of which is to place less faith
in the rational mind and listen more to the messages andwarnings coming from the senses and from other sources
not necessarily accountable in our present frameworksof rationality. The human species has evolved over aeons
not only as predator, but also as prey, and this has very
likely given us capacities to scent danger which we cannot now recognise or account for. Thus it is not so muchin the endurance of pain, in the near-death experience,or in the luck of survival, that the main interest andmeaning of the experience lie for me.
As on the day itself, so even more to me now adecade later the telos of these events lies in the strange
rock formation, which presented to me a lesson about
the vulnerability of humankind known still, I think, tocertain indigenous cultures, but lost to the technologicalone which now colonises the earth. The wisdom of therock formation draws a link between my inability torecognise my vulnerability and the similar failure of myculture in its occupation of the planetary biosystem. The
illusion of invulnerability is typical of the mind of thecoloniser; and as the experience of being prey is eliminated from the face of the earth, along with it goessomething it has to teach about the power and resistanceof nature and the delusions of human arrogance. In mywork as philosopher, I now tend to stress our failure toperceive human vulnerability, the delusions of our viewof ourselves as rational masters of a malleable nature.
The wisdom of the balanced rock does not, I think,
instruct us to reintroduce the experience of being prey,
but rather to try to become aware of the dimension ofexperience that we have lost, and to find other, hopefully
humanitarian, ways to secure the knowledge of vulnerability that it represents. Let us hope that it does not takea similar near-death experience to instruct our culture in
the wisdom of the rock.
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