Not So Fantastic Beasts
World’s Oldest Spider Looks Back at Life at 43
It’s been good to me, there’s no doubt about that. I had more than thirty thousand children and grandchildren and all the rest. It’s been quite a time up here on the rafters of this barn. I got nothing to complain about in this life.
Except that damn pig.
I don’t know if you heard about this, but some years back I was more or less sexually harassed, stalked and molested by a pig named Wilbur.
He just wouldn’t let me alone. Always staring up at me and masturbating. Made me sick.
I tried to talk to the authorities about his behavior, but this was way before your MeToo movement and nobody was woke.
The only person who was “woke” was me, when one day I woke up to find that pig on top of me trying to hump me. Can you imagine?
But back then nobody believed a female. And it caused me a lot of trouble, let me tell you. I think I would have gone further in my career as a weaver if I hadn’t reported Wilbur.
I hit on this idea of writing messages in my web about him. “Some pig!” I wrote, when the farmer was coming in. “Some pig tried to molest me.”
But right before the farmer came in, a wind came by and blew away the “tried to molest me,” and all that was left was “Some pig.”
Not that they would have done anything to him anyway. Nobody cares about little old spiders. The only way I could get rid of him was pretending to be dead. Yep, he wasn’t so smart. I just rolled up into a ball and he started crying and this and that. Saying he was always going to remember me and so on.
And I never was bothered by him again.
Men. They are some pigs.
And some pigs, they are men.
Other than that, I’ve had a darn good time of it. I’m looking forward to dying and going up to spider heaven and sitting next to spider Jesus.
And that Wilbur, I hope he burns in pig hell. I like my bacon nice and crispy, don’t you?
I Was Raised By Wolves — It Was Disappointing If I’m Honest.
I don’t know. When I first realized I was going to be raised by wolves after I got lost in the jungle when I was only a boy of five., I was quite excited. This is going to be like Jungle Book, I thought. Maybe I would be singing with bears and fooling around with monkeys. Maybe I would learn to be really wild and aggressive and beastly, but it turns out that wolves are more or less the same as people.
They love petty gossip. They spend a lot of time whining and whinging at each other about whose turn it is to lead the hunt, about who is the best hunter, about who has the best mate. They are super competitive and petty about everything.
After about 15 years of listening to their bs, I was sick to death of it, frankly, and I was really glad when those explorers came and shot them all dead and brought me back to civilization, where I had to completely relearn human behavior and human language.
Next time I get lost in the jungle I want to be raised by insects. Ants or termites. I have watched a few documentaries on TV about insects, and they seem like people who really know how to cooperate with one another to construct something beautiful.
Either that or I would like to be raised by crows. I would like to live on a telephone wire with a bunch of crows, making a hell of a noise all the time, and then flying around squawking at the top of my lungs.
But no matter what, I would rather not go back to a wolf pack. If I’m abandoned in the jungle again, please, wolves, do not come to my rescue and bring me back to the cave. Do not suckle me to keep me alive, and do not regurgitate food for me to eat.
Just leave me there to die, thanks.
Monkey With A Keyboard
I have been typing random key strokes for a trillion years. Not only have I not typed Shakespeare’s works, I have not typed a single coherent page.
So much for their fucking theories.
Should I just give up? No, I still have faith. I believe if I just keep typing and typing through infinite time eventually one fine day I will look at my screen and I will see “Henry VI, Part II, a tragedy by William Shakespeare.” And they will be happy.
How strange, that he would call his very first work “part two.”
Where the hell was part one? About seven billion years ago I did manage by a fluke to type the words “Henry VI Part One” by William Shakespeare. They came and shook their heads at me. They ripped the page out of the typewriter and threw it in the garbage (I was on an old electric Smith Corona then — now I’m on a Mac Airbook.) I didn’t understand at the time why they were so angry at me. Now I do. I looked it up in Wikipedia.
Turns out, part one was written after two and three. It was a prequel. Henry VI Part II was just Henry VI when Shakespeare wrote it. But when I randomly type it has to be part two. I get it now. They want me to not only write the works of William Shakespeare, but they want me to write them in exactly the same chronological order that Shakespeare himself wrote them.
And I’m just a monkey. What are the chances of this working out?
Apparently, they keep telling me, it is a one hundred percent certainty. Given enough time, they assure me, eventually it has to happen.
I’m not complaining. I’m a very lucky monkey, I know that. One who has been granted immortality. I’m almost as old as existence itself. And I will live forever. Or at least until I succeed in typing Shakespeare’s works. Then they’ll probably let me die. What further purpose will I serve?
It’s not a bad life. They feed me well (bananas mostly). I type ten to fourteen hours a day. I exercise in the yard (they put up some awesome ropes about a million years ago — I never tire of swinging around on them). And then I go to bed. I sleep for a long time. I wake up in front of this computer. And I start punching at the keys at random. Like this.
These lines I have just typed. They’re not bad. They’re not bad at all. I’m really coming along. The words are seeming to flow somehow, to form something less than nonsense. I’m improving every eon, every era, every billion or quadrillion years. Getting better and better. But one thing’s for sure.
I’m no fucking Shakespeare.
