THEY ARE EATING EACH OTHER!

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• November 7, 2025

At the Bronx zoo with my four year old nephew, Blaise, and his mom, Dayna, we headed towards the “World of Darkness,” at the boy’s request. We were running out of time and weren’t going to be able to cover the whole zoo (it’s been over a decade since I’ve been, and I must say, it’s a great zoo for people of all ages), given the choice between the gorillas or the “World of Darkness” and snakes, he chose the darkness and snakes. The chosen one is Slytherin, after all.

At first, it’s hard to see anything in red lit nocturnal “World of Darkness” as our eyes were adjusting from the daylight outside. Blaise was set to be a vampire bat for Halloween, so he was excited to see actual vampire bats flying around their habitat.

There’s a wall of moles. You can peer into every room of the moles home and see their tunnels, like an ant farm. There was ‘dining room’ where there was a pile of food and one hairless, blind ugly/cute creature. Most of the ‘rooms’ were empty, save for one where at least twenty little moles were piled on top of each other. A boy, around 11 or 12, examines it and then yells to his group, “THEY ARE EATING EACH OTHER! EW! COME LOOK! THEY ARE EATING EACH OTHER!”

This catches our attention and we take a gander. I am aware that it is common practice among rodents to eat their young. But all of these moles seemed the same age or at least relatively the same size. There was no blood anywhere. And it didn’t look to me that they were eating each other at all.

Just when I finish the thought, my nephew, much smaller than this other kid goes, “they’re not eating each other! They’re snuggling! That’s what they’re doing. They’re snuggling!”

Dayna and I exchange glances, as her kid seems to be the smartest kid in the room, even among older children. His confidence doesn’t need our approval, but we give it to him anyway. “That’s right, they ARE snuggling for warmth. They aren’t eating each other.”

Blaise loves to learn and then also teach. He’s a very curious boy and if you give him some knowledge, he’s quick to find the nearest person and bestow upon them the facts he just learned, like a boy wonder. While on the monorail, when we briefly stopped he asked why. To which I replied, “maybe there was a squirrel on the track and they are just waiting for him to move.” Blaise takes this in and thinks it over for a moment. “That makes sense,” he says, “you’re not wrong, Aunt Lori, you’re not wrong.” I proceeded to say it was the best day of my life, to which he replied, “it’s the best day of my life too.” He is so sweet, that boy. Melts me every time.

I was thinking about that “World of Darkness” and how easy it is for our eyes and minds to trick us. And I was thinking about the boy who sounded the alarm, “THEY ARE EATING EACH OTHER!” He certainly did believe that until he was corrected by a boy half his age. It’s no such crime to misinterpret a situation, especially when you’re just a kid. But this situation feels like a microcosm of society today. That people who are easily panicked or looking for a reason to sound an alarm will do just that— accidentally spread fake news at first glance of something they don’t understand instead of taking a closer look. Not every little kid or even grown person is gifted with the wisdom to examine something for yourself to see if it’s true or not before just reacting on someone else’s reaction.

Of course I’m biased when it comes to Blaise. I love that boy. He’s exceptionally sweet and smart and simply has the cutest face. It’s not crazy to me that he’s so special. What is crazy to me is that too many adults on the internet lack the maturity that this four year old has. It’s not that the world needs less of someone who incorrectly shout, “THEY ARE EATING EACH OTHER.” It’s more that we need more cooler heads to use logic to deduce the situation. Furthermore, Blaise wasn’t mean or cocky about it when he corrected him, he just wanted him to see what was really happening. There was no gloating. No mockery of the other kids ignorance. Just the excitement that the moles weren’t doing anything ghastly at all. They were snuggling!

In a world of people who like to start fires, be like Blaise, and extinguish fires with a blaze of common sense, curiosity and certain realities over reactions.