I was taking a class in sustainability at Miami Dade College where I teach, and one aspect of it was total immersion in an ecosystem, which in this case happened to be the Florida Everglades. I was in the swamp up to the top of my boots, totally focused on the animals in that environment out of fear that they would eat me, when it hit me that man was an animal too.

This idea had come to me before, many times, but this was the first time it came with such clarity, such beauty, and so powerfully that I felt the need to write it down. As the music of the birds harped and fluted above my head, I pictured mankind as a species near the top of the food chain, but if we were an animal, who then would control us—make us beasts of burden, pets, food even, as we do to other animals?

I had some idea that they were larger than we are. Just as intelligent. With the same flaws. With the same concept of a social society. Same kind of family structure. There would be children, of course, and they would have pets.

Some of these children would harm these human pets unintentionally. I had visions of boys putting tadpoles in their pockets as I had done as a child, bringing them home, taking them out to show my mother, but finding them dead. I saw some of these boys bringing home stray cats and dogs as I had done, and having their mothers say “Take it back. Your father’s allergic to it.” I could hear these boys say as I had said, “But mom, why can't I keep him?"

I was already armed, pen in hand, because we were required to take notes for this class in the swamp, and so I wrote down: “But mom, Every boy should have a . . . man.”