"You are an ichneumon. You mated and your eggs are fertile. If you can't find a caterpillar on which to lay your eggs, your young will starve. When the eggs hatch, the young will eat any body in which they find themselves, so if you don't kill them by emitting them broadcast over the landscape, they'll eat you alive. But if you let them drop over the fields you will probably be dead yourself, of old age, before they even hatch to starve, and the whole show will be over and done, and a wretched one it was. You feel them coming, and coming, and you struggle to rise…."
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Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesWomen academics from the United StatesPeople from Pittsburgh
Original Language: English
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"Fecundity", p. 172
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Annie_Dillard
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Annie Dillard
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