nature boy

Marty Stouffer here. My reintroduction to the wild was kicked off by slamming into a doe, a deer, a female deer, in a pickup truck a mile outside the city limits. Since packing it up to the nether regions of Wisconsin from the larger, though day-walkable, metropolis of the southern side of the state, I have witnessed first hand several marvels of ecological Darwinism. Where does a hummingbird get off beating its wings at a rate faster than a G-force video card can produce, a lightning bug making its ass glow to attract mates, a skunk warding off unsuspectors with an unearthly smell of ass, a bumblebee moth defending itself by appearing as a threatening creature, while probably tasting like turkey to a feline or canine? Hell, it even flys like a bee. Speaking of turkeys. Saw what looked like a drove of vultures picking at a deer carcass on the side of the road. Must have been the turkey variety since I'm not in Arizona. I also took a few snapshots of bears resorting to a raid on our bird feeder. I'm not so impressed by bears. They look to me like overweight dogs. In Milwaukee the wildlife consists of herds of rabbits (Thank you Mr. Fred Rogers for clearing up the term 'herd' when referring to rabbits. Does that mean there can be a stampede of rabbits?), swarms of pidgeons and gulls... But I came across a possum scared out of it's mind and cowering between the pillars of the dormitory building. I shared the frightened creature with an acquaintance I picked up from finding out that a good friend of mine in grade school is his older cousin. He had only to add when I had the idea to make stew, "Nah, they're really greasy."

So why do creatures evolve clever camouflage, bizarre weaponry, flashy rituals, and physics-defying modes of transportation? I suppose if all species differed only in size and resembled one another, as if all animals looked and behaved like the homo sapien, there'd be even more confilcting views on carnivorousness, it would take a lot of trial and error to reproduce, and statutory rape would deadlock the courts... and there's always the beastiality issue. In any case, I have returned from a cigarette outside and saw a bat. And like the winged rodent that I am, I use my sonic abilities, and fade in to the night.