From Vince, to Lucy

A Model of "Lucy," the celebrated skeletal remains of a female hominid who lived 3.2 million years ago...

---

Hominid, Cradle of Humankind by flowcomm on flickr

He approaches her from behind, he is close. She is napping, curled up in the fetal position, resting her wary muscles. But she senses him, and with one quick extension of her powerful arm, she shoves him back at least five feet and he retreats. She does not want him on top of her right now.

She opens her eyes. Her babies are snuggled under a bush in front of her. She is thirsty and the sound of the stream calls to her. The stream; it could be dangerous there, and as she walks towards it, her alertness sharpens. After-all, everything drinks from that stream. And a great deal of them could run much faster than she, and they are bigger, and they may want to eat her.

Oh, the water feels good. She looks back at her babies. Mam, the eldest of the females, is sitting next to them now. And there is Luk, watching her with one thing on his mind.

The past or future is not in her vocabulary. Neither is money, or time, or worry, or love. But she has the feeling of love with her family. And she has a similar feeling of love with the water that makes love to her body, the sky that tells her when to sleep, and the land with its endless wonders, and the berries she only knows as ‘Suk’--her favorite.

She leads a lonely life, but is too busy living to know it--a lonely life, because she is the only one inside her mind. Everything else is outside. She likes it when Mam scratches her back.

All that she wants is another baby. She walks up to Luk, turns her back, and makes her pose. All that she wants is another baby…

---

Editor's note:
Hi Blogland visitors (if anyone’s still out there)--hope you are all doing well!!! I've been away from Blogland on various extra-curricular excursions. I'm taking a journey next week to Australia again for 40 days and 40 nights. Then I'm back here sometime in November.

As some of you know (April 13th post) my last expedition to Australia to catch the first invisible butterfly (Belenois Invisibilis) failed miserably.

This time, I’m going after something a little less elusive. A plant! I’m tentatively calling this plant the Arundiganth Amamilis. But it’s currently an undiscovered new species, and still just a rumor, but my sources and instinct tells me it’s out there in the Northern Territory—and I’m going to catch one. I say catch, because according to my contacts, this plant can apparently uproot itself and blow with the wind.

With shallow roots, it grows on other plants length-wise (flat, not tall.) It’s transparent, and virtually invisible. It can easily be mistaken for a slug trail, or when in flight, a string of spider web.

The problem is the plants are thought to thrive in a region controlled by up to 90 trillion Yellow Crazy ants. These bugs shoot acid in your eyes to blind you then they run away. Then they come back with a swarm of friends from their supercolonies to eat you. They can devour an entire human body in minutes.

I’m bringing my goggles, magnifying glass, Petri dish, rubber ant proof suit, and my usual Safari gear. Wish me luck!