We all think that predators are fierce animals, and that they are. We also think that predators are cruel and selfish, scary. The word predator made us think of big fangs, deafening howls and messily ripped apart preys. Yet beyond our human nightmares, beyond our well build cities and brick houses, beyond all our ideas of order and control, predators keep the world turning.
Deep in the forest is not easy to see sister Marta. Humans, coveting appearances that they can’t have, have always tried to catch her, and use her spectacular fur to distinguish themselves as kings and queens. The marta in the forest has no kingdom of her own, always fierce, mostly shy. Her slender body is a flash in the twilight, when she hunts. Her hunting is speed and precision, it is control. You can imagine that in sister Marten the wiseness of Mochuelo and the strength of the Badger find balance, or perhaps they are the ones balanced by the art of their sister. Anyhow, beyond our human metaphors, it is true that only martens keep the many plagues of humans, and of the forest, in check.
So now and again I have calmed down and tried to keep my silence to see sister Marta when she haunts the forest, in the twilight. Surrounded by her bigger and flashier companions, it is easy to miss her. But mice will run over the caves of the badgers, or magpies will collapse the trees of the howls, if sister Marta would not catch and kill the pest, in a flash and without doubt, her surgical strikes predating the catastrophe of the loss of balance. Because that is, after all, what predators are. The certainty of death that keep all of us, alive.
