the valley of shadows

ill-*lit* llogging...

Name:
Location: Austin, TX, United States

Sunday, September 26, 2004

the snoring walrus


The walrus suddenly woke up and caught himself snoring. Now one might ask, quite reasonably, as to how that could ever happen? Doesn't the fact that you are snoring usually imply that you're fast asleep, blissfully unaware of the unbearable misery you so keenly inflict on the people around you, quite likely your loved ones. (Whoever heard of anyone with enemies sleep soundly anyway?).

Well, walruses aren't humans, my friend and there's a reason they're known to be walruses, not any other kind. This difference, amongst many (arguably more perceptible ones), is just another one. Evolution has an uncanny way of finding use for the most improbable combinations of structures and traits, especially under unchanging conditions for millenia, to allow the creature in question (and work in progress) to accumulate a seemingly puny advantage, that bestows upon it a long lease of propagation and proliferation for several more epochs.

This phenomenon, if replayed in one's imagination, almost appears cartoonish in it's physical silliness. But fish it does catch, yes! The snoring walrus provides a dramatic portrayal of all creation being mere creation, no more than puppets, in the hands of Nature. Not much else though, no moral lessons; in fact, quite the contrary, it seems to validate the lessons compulsive, professional slackers (and to a lesser extent, impulsively-slacking professionals) seem to internalize early on in their lives -- that hard work is hard to justify, when one can make do with a certain leisurely, finely-tuned, harmonious stasis with one's surroundings.

The snore itself rises and falls with the waves reaching across to the rocks from the ocean floor, which is not surprising in itself, considering the average size of a walrus. The fish are drawn into what is in comparison a gently rolling hum riding bigger waves. As soon as the snores reach a crescendo, in concord with the bigger kahuna on the beach, the fish are closest to the source of this mildly hypnotic drone. And that is precisely when, by virtue of the principles of superposition of waves, both aquatic and auditory, the walruses' brain registers what could only be roughly projected as a trigger event, and a thousand bells toll in one critical instant. And lo! the marine finds himself ashore, staring at a foamy crest of brine , littered with a motley bunch of finned friends, a few of them already swimming on it's way to it's shiny wet snout, ready to be chomped down the blubbery throat.

WAL Я US, it reads inside.