Ecology of the Joyful Beasts

In that South Sea region known as Pelagu, often referred to as the "eighth continent", on the slopes of its eight vast misty landmasses, in the rainy season, the owlbeasts return. They dodder like drunken babies in the highlands, alone and in groups, with owl heads and stout teddy-bear bodies.

I saw an owlbeast in a rainstorm once, through my window, scampering in perfect obedience to whatever whim possessed it in that moment, often stumbling and struggling mightily to right itself, before flinging itself headlong into its next adventure, considering no past and hardly any future.

They have survived in some numbers, despite deforestation, largely because no one has yet to determine a use for an owlbeast carcass. They have nothing to offer humankind but the example of their blithe, idiotic joy. They do nothing but play, they know nothing else.

Several times, I thought this one might drown as it floundered in the torrent, but I stopped myself from rising to its aid. Better to let life and death take their courses, as they have for so long before humanity arrived here.

When I was a child, I used to save the worms I came upon, frying on summer pavements, moist and alive, struggling to reach nowhere in particular. Their failure moved me, I conducted those I could into the cool amnesty of the grass. I knew I was on the side of the worms, on the side of life.

I abandoned this habit after I asked myself, what does a worm do, after its ordeal is over? Does it settle down in a nice house with its worm wife and worm children, grateful for the chance to start again? No, it is led by instinct into some inevitable misadventure, shrivels on a sidewalk, drowns in a rain puddle, is fed to a baby bird by a mama bird. Worms are ordinary creatures and worm-death is ordinary.

So it seemed with the creature I then saw before me. It didn't seem afraid or worried, even though it was clearly in some danger. It's a mystery to me how they ever thrived, even in an ecosystem where predators are few, being as clumsy and hyperactive as they are. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen one dead that hadn't been rifle-shot.

It wasn't until after the rain stopped and the 'beast found its way into the open door of the laundromat across the green sward of invincible Pelagu grass that I was moved to defend it.

I shot to my feet when a group of settlers emerged from among the washers and dryers and set upon the oblivious creature; headed for the door and grabbed for the Stick I Thought Might Be Good For Something I had brought in from outside, thinking it might be good for something.  Immediately, it broke in my grasp, into three pieces. I chose the largest, and stepped outside.

There were four of them. I remember distinctly, the foremost, a black woman in her forties or fifties, in a rumpled beige raincoat, grinning at me as she saluted.

The Stars and Stripes appeared behind the last noble defenders of the Pelagu Center Settlement Laundromat.