Little Bugoids

 

Flirtatious: "Meet me down in the holler and I'll whip us up some smoked possom basted in corn liker."

Real Mood? Spiritually shamed.

Prediction: Another year will go by without Virginia Annexing West Virginia.

I'm reading this book. The book is a gift from our good friend Cheri (Richmond) Haran  who just got hitched and moved to Ireland. Thanks Cheri!  (FOR THE BOOK, NOT FOR MOVING TO IRELAND) The title of the book is "The Education of Little Tree." The author is a guy named Forrest Carter. He died quite a while ago. (1979)  But his soul is in print and we're exploring it. I say we because Peggy read it first, and I looked up just as she finished the last paragraph. Streams of tears were cascading off her cheeks. She reached out to me for comfort and I figured I was being told I'd better put my other readin' aside for while. In this case I'm glad I did.

It's the story of a Cherokee orphan boy being raised by his grandparents in the Eastern hills of the Cherokee Nation. (The Original Cherokee Nation...somewhere in North Carolina we think) Carter is "Little Tree," and he shares with us an education that ironically you can't get from book learnin'.  Did you know, for instance, that "when a red fox is chased by hounds it circles it's den in a one mile diameter to keep the hounds away from it's kits? When the gray fox does the same thing he runs in a figure eight with his den right where the lines of the eight cross." You can only get that kind of education by listenin' to yer granpa or observing it yourself.  This is just a tease to get you to go find a copy of your own.  I plan on reading this book more than once.

Carter's prose reminds me of one of the TV journalism lessons I try to impart.  Since TV is a visual medium "you as a reporter must be aware of all the visual elements that apply to the story. You have to be curious and you have to see everything going on around you. Not everything will apply to your story, but some things  will."

So here I am sittin' in the tub 'cause that's a place I like to read. I'm digestin'  all this "Little Tree" wisdom and pause to look out the window. There is a 30 foot tall Aspen right there in my face.  Adolescent house finches often stop by to entertain me with some sort of competitive antics. Just as I'm about to leave the Aspen to the birds and get back to "Little Tree",  I shoot a glance at the trunk. Now if you haven't done that, an Aspen tree has a very unique structure. All trees, including the Aspen, have horizontal rings that tell their age. But the Aspen also have vertical rings all the way up and down the trunk. They're similar to the sectioning you see in bamboo. Anyway, as I'm looking at these sections my eye catches a bug about the size of an ant. It's more oval to the ant's elongated form.  It has two little feelers out front that it appears to use for direction and locomotion.  

So I put the book down and lock in on what I will characterize as a phenomenal microscopic athlete. I draw the analogy because professional football camps are just getting underway across the country. We'll all be hearing about the dreaded 40 yard dashes. Well all you whining millionaires ought to come watch this bug get in shape. Let me describe it.

The bug gets down on all fours or eights or whatever it's sitting on. It's crouch begins right on the cusp of one of those section rings. On a signal of it's own, it takes off at incredible speed and stops on a dime on the next section line. My math ain't so hot, but as a journalist you get pretty good in time estimating distances and crowd sizes and stuff like that. This was stuff like that.

 I'm thinkin' the ratio of that bug's size to an out of shape offensive lineman's size would be proportionate to the distance between two Aspen vertical section lines and forty yards. (or 8  chalk lines on a football grid.)

If I remember right an incredible forty yard dash time for a highly paid human athlete is between four and five seconds. Okay guys, I hope you'll let this microbeast be an inspiration. He is doing that 40 in less than a second. It's official.  I was timing him from section to section.  I watched him do twenty in a row without breaking a sweat. And he was doing it perpendicular to gravity? ( go talk to your agent and tell him to give some of your signing bonus back, with the qualifier the team lowers the ticket prices. Or build in an incentive that you get paid that bonus when you can run a 40 in one second.)

It made me think back to this past weekend when I'm out trying to get a shot of a hummingbird.  In front of me is a spider web displaying it's catch in the early sunshine. While I'm watching,  a large fly is added to the spider's dinner plate. I look down for just a second and when I come back up, the spider has materialized from nowhere. (kind of like a free safety hiding behind the linebacker.) I don't have pictures of this so it's up to you whether or not you take my word for it.   In less than 5 seconds the spider devours everything in his trap and then he and his web just totally disappear. Let's see you rookies at the training camp dinner table do that!

Wouldn't it be nice if we could pick the brains of these lilliputian jocks around us.  You know, find out what they eat, how they get those quick starts off the ball, what kind of stickum they put on their feelers, what it feels like to run straight up. The answers could diminish the need for steroids Mr. Palmiero.

I'll betcha "Little Tree" and Granpa have already had those conversations. I wonder if we can find out where they stashed their notes?