Sunday, July 3, 2011

In my next incarnation, if there is such a thing

I want to be a biologist. The infinite variety of life on this planet is wondrous to me, and who knows what we will find on other planets if we ever get there. Just watching the chickens in the yard is deeply satisfying, and a source of wonder. The design of chicken feet. The fact that they excrete everything out of the same cloaca (including eggs), instead of having three different orifices. Maybe I wouldn't be so astonished if I had been brought up on a farm instead of a city block in Brooklyn.

Insects are also astonishing. I learned recently that the household pest they call the silverfish can live for 11 years. That's as long as a chicken, assuming you don't butcher it once it stops laying eggs. The desert scorpion (an arthropod, not an insect) has another solution to the problem of waste. In order to survive in an arid environment, it extracts every tiniest drop of water from its food, and excretes only powder. Unlike the chicken (or other birds), it has a separate orifice for reproduction.

I've had cats for decades, but never really looked inside their mouths. Only when a veterinarian told me to apply an enzyme paste to their gums did I discover that they have no space between their lower lips and gums. So I have to apply it in the under the upper lips alone. I felt like a fool. On the other hand, Aristotle never looked inside human mouths either, and pontificated that men had more teeth than women.

Right now I'm starting a chapter in the sequel to my novel, in which a scorpion features prominently.

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