[Intro — guitar only, 32 bars, single riff repeated] [Verse 1] Order Coleoptera family Carabidae the bombardier beetle Brachinus crepitans Dwelling on every continent save the frozen south small, brown, and untroubled by the eye of man Bearing its destruction in two sundered chambers two poisons kept from one another deep within the flesh When cornered it opens the gate and the long-kept chemicals wed boiling at the moment of meeting one hundred degrees at the tip An audible detonation a crack, a small damnation the ant releases its grip and the beetle passes through [Chorus] In the dark in the rot in the bark in the root they were there they were there before the plough before the boot [Guitar solo — 40 bars, slow and searching] [Verse 2] Order Coleoptera family Phengodidae the trilobite beetle Duliticola paradoxa Haunting the rainforests of Borneo and Malaysia armored and ancient-seeming flat as an opened palm She wears the shape of something the old seas forgot a creature borrowed from a harder world The female holds her larval form until death no wings, no final body she never completes the crossing The male bears no resemblance different vessel, different bearing without the blood evidence you would not call them kin Witnessed coupling twice in all of recorded history twice in a hundred years of turning over stones [Chorus] In the dark in the rot in the bark in the root they were there they were there before the plough before the boot [Guitar solo — 40 bars, mournful, upper register] [Verse 3] Order Coleoptera family Attelabidae the giraffe weevil Trachelophorus giraffa Bound to Madagascar to its deep eastern forest found nowhere beneath this sun save only there The male bears a neck twice the length of the female wrought not for reaching but for slow contest on a bough Two males turning to face swinging their long necks sideways the longer neck still swinging after The female bears a shorter neck and puts hers to finer purpose she rolls a single leaf with care, with some precision One egg sealed within the roll the stem severed from the branch the whole vessel dropped to the dark forest floor [Chorus] In the dark in the rot in the bark in the root they were there they were there before the plough before the boot before the plough before the boot
