Dillard writing

Drosophila Melanogaster is one creature that I have come to know more intimately than I would ever care to. The common fruit fly is an abundant model organism for genetics research with many different mutations. I spent 3 days a week for 3 weeks staring at them, separating different mutations from each other. Cinnabar eye is a mutation causing the eye to be a slight shade more brown than the traditional red coloring. In order to separate them I must painstakingly stare at the eye under multitudes of light adjustments. Most think that fly eyes are strange and then don't give it a second thought. After hours of studying them, I started to have dreams of people with fly eyes! Then it was aliens, and dogs with those horrific eyes! Then came a different mutation, Vestigial Wing. This one causes both wings to be shriveled and non-functioning.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart

1. "Buffalo for the Broken Heart" fits in with nature writing because the core idea/moral of the story is to keep the land as it originally was as much as is possible for a person to sustain themselves as well. Dan tells the story of how he would put up many extra miles of fencing, when he had cows, in order to rotate the pastures so that the land would be more fertile and natural since cows will naturally eat the grass in their immediate area until it is dead. He made the switch to buffalo primarily because he wanted to bring back the prairie to its original habitat before man hunted out the buffalo and started ranching cows in their place. O'Brien has an intimate connection to the land and its creatures almost as if they replaced the kids he never had.

2. As I said in the previous question, I think that the land and its native animals almost replace the spot that a child could have in his heart. When he describes how beautiful his land looks, and the way his buffalo play in the field, I can picture him saying some of the same things about a son or daughter. He has the same sense of accomplishment in caring for the land as a father may about watching a son win his first baseball game.

3. I don't think that I have any authority to give him any critiques on the way he uses his land. First of all because I have minimal farming experience, but most importantly because he has a strict belief in how his land should be run. Many people could probably take that land and make it more profitable, but the methods required to do that are against O'Briens morals.