Understanding Dung Beetles

ROGER ELKIN

 

They come bumbling at you – head height,

so you have to duck – black whizzing bullets

streaking arrow-straight at speed, then go arcing

in to land, and begin their trundling roll.

 

It’s their sensitive sense of smell

that delivers them to hunted dung,

and capturing it have to secrete it,

rolling it to safety, and burial.

 

They work arse-over-heels, literally:

though have spade-shaped heads

use their hind legs to shift a dung ball

fifty times their body weight: backwards.

 

Make their mating places underground,

laying their eggs in these rich dumps of muck,

larders for the larvae’s birthing girth.

 

Get all their nutrients from dung:

squeeze and suck the seeps of liquid,

rich in feeding.

 

Scientists calculate they navigate

via polarization patterns of planets;

and some governments fine drivers

for crushing them to scabby pulp.

 

            (There’s foresight for you –

             Putting dung-shovellers before cars)

 

Dung is all they own.

Get high on piles of ordure.

 

And dedicating their lives to dung

question the testament

that bread is the staff of life.

 

 

First Prize winner, Build Africa Poetry Competition 2012.