It Seemed Harmless

It seemed harmless at first, and so we just let him keep doing it and he sat there for hours on the porch cutting pictures and photographs of animals from any newspaper or magazine or pamphlet he could find and it seemed like the only time he wasn’t on the porch cutting out pictures of animals was when he was out looking for more pamphlets, newspapers, or magazines and from which he cut more pictures and photographs of animals or, if he wasn’t doing that, he was pinning with straight pins all those pictures and photographs of animals on the walls of, first, his room and when it was clear that he’d finished in there, pictures and photographs of animals spilled out into the hallway and down into the living room and kitchen not to mention the tattered leftover newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines fluttering around the porch and rolling across the lawn, each more-or-less complete except where pictures and photographs of animals had once been printed and he had cut them out to pin inside the house and were now a negative space, a silhouette of an empty nothing shaped like a tiger or a walrus or a ladybug or a basket full of cute baby kittens and just because he was doing that and because of the way the yard and porch and the inside of the house started looking, they took to calling us all names and whatnot and that, I believe, is not fair at all.