My jaw is still a dusky shade of violet. but I can talk again without a constant reminder of my scrap. Thank goodness, because otherwise I doubt I would have made the effort to chat with our interviewee today.
He sat alone in one of the booths, nursing a creme de menthe, reading a book that was thicker than a log. His nose was still deep between the pages when the penultimate patron waved goodnight. I had to tap him on the shoulder when it was my bedtime. He only had thirty pages left of his book, and made it very clear he wasn't going until the back cover closed.
I agreed to let him stay on the condition he gave me a story. Kristov was his name.
Creme de menthe. That's a bottle that will sit on the shelf for the next six months.
K: Carnivores capture the imagination, but their numbers stay low. They are machines burning through resources with razor sharp teeth. There will always be more insects than lions.
Yet thanks to the Haircut, these dominant but limited animals are shifting. Piling up like desert sand against a door. Humans no longer encroach their habitat. They have a ready supply of meat.
The Butter Mice have limited budgets. If the wildlife is sorting the problem out for them, they can worry about hordes of crocodiles filling the rivers in ten years time.
The author of my book debates what this means. Whether when the situation changes so much, we should bother to try and save the planets at all. Nature has taken it’s course across the universe in a way that has never been seen before. Maybe the winners here are those with claws and high protein diets.
Here's a cracking example. There's a planet where the parnsipheads are so prevalent they stumble in vast herds across open grasslands. This place is home to creatures striped like tigers, but with six muscly legs, and a long flat tail that spreads out like peacock feathers.
These used to be some of the fastest creatures ever discovered. But now they walk. They stroll. They bat one of the unread down, and have a hearty lunch. Their leans bodies are now barrels of fat.
Tiny evolutionary miracles like this are happening all over the place. You may think its tragic that human beings are decreasing. But we weren’t there in the first place. The animals are taking back what used to be their home. Only now with a complimentary running buffet. Or rather, a shuffling one.
I know we've pegged back the parsniphead problem. But something else will knock us back down. Then we are back on the food chain.'
He finished his book, and left without saying good bye. I'm not sure if I agree with his theory, but it was good to get some of that creme de menthe shifted.
