Ode to the Dung Beetle

On clear nights with no moon, dung beetles 
have been shown to navigate by the Milky Way,
using the light it sketches to help them roll
balls of dung they've worked so hard to sculpt—
in a straight line, away from the dung heap 
and potential rivals. For mating and reproducing, 
a well-packed offering can weigh 250 times 
a beetle's body weight. A dung ball is perfectly 
round, the size of a chocolate truffle. A female 
dung beetle lays her eggs in it, then tends 
the grubs that emerge. This industry helps 
aerate the soil, break down nutrients, disperse 
seeds, thereby repurposing fields of excrement
that might otherwise carpet this earth end to
end. Considering the material they work with, 
dung beetles are a tough act to follow— 
their efficiency almost elegant, their 
collaboration a given. Trucks pick up
our garbage once a week. Now and then, 
the contents spill into the street. But we  
don't quite know what to do with the neighbor 
who so rudely dumps bags filled with broken 
eggshells, chicken bones, fruit peel, and sink 
detritus onto our front yard, just because 
in the dark, we mistook her bin for ours.