Creatures, Curiosities, and Cruelties — by Bethany Jarmul

artwork by James Keul

With our bare hands my sister and I caught ten tadpoles—scooped them from the deep puddles down the grassy hill, near the rusted rail line behind our grandparent’s Appalachian home and brought them to our house, a 30-minute minivan ride away, in a Ball glass jar that once contained homemade apple butter. I held the jar tightly between my thighs and hands, trying to prevent too much sloshing.

Despite our mother’s objections and the pond-scum smell, we kept them on our white dresser in the bedroom we shared, between my sister’s Bratz dolls and my rock collection. We watched with open mouths as our ten tiny circus performers wiggled and fluttered in failed synchronization, eyes twitching and glaring at us as if to say, Who are you and what have you done?

 We were old enough to know what would happen—they’d sprout legs and spots and webbed feet and morph into slimy bug-eating creatures with eyes popping out of their heads—and couldn’t wait to watch. We didn’t feed them, but believed they would eat the algae or microscopic bugs in the pond water. Looking back, I wonder why our parents didn’t dial-up the internet or reference the encyclopedias in our basement to determine an appropriate diet for our new pets. Perhaps, they wanted nature to take the tadpoles away, so they didn’t have to.

A few days later, we counted our tadpoles twice, three times—but it was true. Overnight, our ten tadpoles had turned into seven. Over the course of a week, seven turned into five, then three. We accused our mother of sneaking them out during the night. We accused our father of flushing them down the toilet. We even accused our Maltese dog, whose paws could never reach that high.

Then one morning, when we hopped over to the jar, only a single tadpole remained—fat and round like the very hungry caterpillar after his ice cream-and-sausage smorgasbord. Our father suggested we name our round and jolly fellow Moby Dick. Despite his size, there were no signs of transformation—not even the stub of a leg.

I didn’t know much about the wide world then. Didn’t know about the 1,500 species of cannibalistic animals. Didn’t know about our species—what hunger can do to a person, can drive a person to do. Didn’t know the many ways one person can consume another. But I knew—and felt incredibly grown-up in my realization—that it was better to be Moby than one of his siblings, better to eat than be eaten.

Three days later, Moby was belly-up, a string of algae hanging from his tail. I stood over his dead body, swallowed hard as the blood of ten tadpoles coated my once-bare hands.

Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks and one poetry collection—This Strange and Wonderful Existence (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Take Me Home (Belle Point Press, 2024), and Lightning is a Mother (ELJ Editions, 2025). Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or @BethanyJarmul.