Human death is usually boxed, buried, and viewed through a facade of flowers. We frequently choose poison rather than traps that must be emptied of corpses when we exterminate both household and barnyard pests. The list goes on and on. Death and predation are not listed in the tourist guides designed to attract visitors to Maine, so the parks maintain the fictions people want to live with. But the truths of Darwinian struggle are all around us, and sometimes they intrude.
Spiders leave desiccated corpses in the corners of our houses.
Robins pull worms from our manicured lawns. A whale has died and turned orange. It heaves and rolls in the waves and looks like a giant sweet potato. It drifts just off the beach, and I'm sure it will wash in and rot in front of the house for months. My sister calls the Coast Guard in South Portland.