Murder on West 46th Street
Photo courtesy of Walthery, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Spotted lanternflies were on Broadway this summer.
But they received no applause, no standing ovation.
Instead,
we were asked to kill them.
They’re an invasive species,
you see,
so we, New Yorkers,
were counted on to do our civic duty.
I squashed one under my foot
on West 46th Street
in front of the Richard Rodgers Theatre
where Hamilton is playing.
Months later,
I still feel guilty about it.
After all,
it’s through no fault of theirs
that the spotted lanternflies got introduced to the wrong habitat.
So why should they be the ones to pay the price?