We probably all would benefit from being Ahab to some deeply personal version of Moby Dick. It is not enough in life to aspire to lofty ambitions. As I explain to my children, to truly round out a full life you also need equal parts of sadness, frustrations, and a powerful enemy whose final destruction compels your darkest dreams. My Moby Dick is a creature largely unseen, burrowing as he does beneath my garden, and proving all too clever and elusive for capture. Each morning I awake to find his extraordinary tunnels across my level playing field. But our relationship is anything but a level playing field indeed. My simple hominid brain is no match for this 10 ounce fur ball of evil. Countless traps, potions down holes, efforts even to drive out his food supply of worms have been to no avail. New mounds of fresh earth appear every morning of every Fall of every year. Each mound is a neon sign post advertising my failure as a "higher vertebrate"

But there is a profound love there, and admiration too. Ahab loved Moby Dick with a passion rivalled only by his hatred. These tiny creatures represent a higher achievement on the evolutionary scale than I do. Exploiting the endless food supply underground, the safety of a subterranean world, and pulling off the extreme metabolism to make it work is nothing less than a marvel of adaptive success. If one day I finally catch the little bastard I'm not sure whether my first response will be violent, or instead to cradle the furry source of my autumnal suffering close to my heart.

ACROCINUS