We ate their eggs. We ate them. We little mammals ate them. And we inherited the earth.
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Comments on the World Wide Copyright Billy Glad 2005 - 2024
6 comments:
Fuck 'em.
They had it their way long enough.
They thought they could stomp us.
"Like rats in a closet," Tyrannosaurus Rick said.
We ate his fuckin' eggs though, eh?
After the eggs are gone...
What're we gonna eat?
And who.
I grew up near a beach. 300 yards from the end of the lane by our house. Penny Beach, just off Bluff Road. The tides are huge there, the water's reddish-brown from the clay, bald eagles overhead, Boot Island sitting out there in the Basin, creeks for swimming, half-salt, half-fresh, the tide coming in... man... more water comes through there than the world's 20 biggest rivers combined, they say... and the sandpipers in August -- see them, flying in unison, thousands of them, turning silver grey, invisible, silver, grey, invisible, see that, and you've seen the silver lining of God's own mind.
If you go there, walk down along that beach, to your right, and you'll see cliffs start rising up. The layers of shale get higher & higher as you walk. The rock breaks and topples off the cliff in big heaps when the Winter ice crashes against them. Loafs, books, of rock. You can peel them back, like leaves, pages, and there's fossils, literally fossils by the thousand, sitting there on every page. I'm not joking. Ferns. Branches. Sea creatures. Unreal. We used to take them and dump them in a big box of sand, sell them to tourists, back at the U-Pick. Fossils and apples.
Down at the point, where the cliff reaches the furthest out into the water, stop and turn out toward the water. Walk about 100 yards directly out across the mud. Make sure you follow the curving rock that shows up through the sand & mud, right? It's like a path.
Now look down. There's a dozen, oh, twenty, footprints there. They're as long as a man's foot. Spaced about a stride apart. We used to put our bare feet in them & walk along, stepping in each one, checking to see whose feet fit the best. My cousins and I. Sometimes, we wondered what they were. WHAT made them. We imagined things.
Then the scientists came. From Acadia and Dal, from Scotland and McGill, even some Americans. They wrote it all up.
"The first creature to ever set foot on land." That's what made the footprints, they said. The FIRST steps any creature ever made on solid land.
Some massive amphibian, apparently. 350 million years ago. Before the dinosaurs. The first steps any creature ever made on land. And we walked in them every Summer day.
When we told my Dad what the scientists said, he laughed. Said he figured some of the neighbours hadn't evolved much further. "Give 'em time," he said. "These things take time."
The scientists decided the footprints were at risk. People might come & "disturb" them. Now that the scientists had made them famous. Shit, nobody around home understood what they were goin' on about. Except maybe me. And Sherman, our Grade 5 Science teacher. He got so excited when he found out I was interested in them, he went running & jumping over those rocks, slipped on his ass in the mud, didn't give a damn, happy, ecstatic, clearing the footprints off with his arm, telling me about the type of foot... and how they walked... and what they ate.
I didn't give a shit about that. I wondered what the big fuckers thought. Must've had SOME thought or other run through their heads, at a moment like that, eh? You know, beyond, "Nice seaweed, fuck my legs are sore."
Anyway. The scientists cut those footprints out. Cut 'em right out in big rock blocks. Shipped them off to museums down South. Never even told us they were gonna do it. Maybe you can see them in your town now. I sure hope so.
Though I bet they won't let you fit YOUR feet in 'em. So it's not quite the same, but good enough for the city, I guess.
I saw Sherman the next Summer. Down on the beach. Mentioned it to him. The scientists. And how we were famous.
Sherman wept.
P.S. Those footprints? They fit my feet to a fuckin' T.
I think this may be my favourite post, ever. I should just delete all my comments & let it stand on its own.
17 fuckin' words, Billy. And it's my favourite. Tip of the hat.
Hell, the whole hat.
Someone just sent me this breakfast menu.
I'll have a mussaurus omelet, hash browns and bacon. Whole wheat toast. Dry.
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