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We glide over the city, sticks smoldering in our claws. At alpha’s cry, our talons open. Fire falls from the sky, our greatest predator now prey.

For some time I’ve been captivated by this story about firehawk raptors, birds of prey in Australia that use fire as a tool to smoke vermin out of the forest. They pick up burning sticks from a fire and drop them into unburned sections of the forest, confounding human fire containment efforts in order to feed themselves. I wondered what would happen if they used the same strategies to curb the destruction of the most dangerous species on the planet: humans.

//Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com): author of www.thetreevolution.net & www.circesbicycle.com; a fiction ed @ Barrelhouse; MFA cand @ American Univ//