croc hands

i was involved in a bitter argument surrounding the moral obscenity of several white men who had come to my village to 'harvest' a few hundred crocodile hands in order to decorate their automobile tire sidewalls (from the wrist joint, palm side up only as the scales where paler and flatter). they had no plans or use for the rest of the reptile, but argued it didn't matter if the reptiles were left to rot in the equatorial sun as we had no claim to them anyway. my anger grew as they shared more of their intention and i loudly drew my people in from their chores to understand the repercussions of the useless slaughter. in an effort to calm the situation, the white men turned their focus away from me and the other women and began to speak only to our men. they began to offer them money (a truly useless thing) claiming that all manner of tools and goods could be purchased with the colorful paper they fanned in the air. in towns only weeks away by foot, 'everything' could be purchased. i saw that the men began to respond to the thought of sharp new knives and tools and the crocodile slaughter was losing importance by comparison. my village was small and the women and i quickly came to an irrevocable agreement- if our men did not stand with us against the killing, we would abandon them all. this shared statement woke our men from the hypnotic fumes of greed and they immediately turned their heads back to right thinking. at that point, the white men understood the battle was lost and they were quite outnumbered. almost without pausing, the white men began to point up and all around to our rubber trees saying that they would be just as happy to harvest them.