Living Stone

Pliny the Elder has been googling for a long time. He sits back, and laughs.

What's up, Pliny? I say.

You claim you were a stone in a former life, says Pliny. Well I have just uncovered the very one you must have been.

I thought you said my claim was preposterous.

It was, in terms of Pythagorean doctrine. For Pythagorus believed in transmigration of the soul, but only between humans, animals and plants, in other words, only between living creatures.

So? I say testily.

So. I thought I would do some research of my own, to see if there is any record of such a thing as a living stone.

And is there?

At first I came up against a wall of Livingstones. People with that name. I was googling through the googlepages thinking this is surely proof there are no living stones. But then I began to question why there should be so many people with this name? There must surely be a reason for that.

Why yes! My own father was called Joseph Andrew Livingstone!

Aha! Anyway, this served to spur me on. I googled to the 6th page and there I saw the words: Living stone. I clicked on the entry. Imagine my surprise when I saw a large coloured photograph of a mottled brown stone with a head and legs!

Come on Pliny, it was a fake.

No, it was not. The site belonged to the CSIRO. That is your Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is it not? They would not countenance a fake.

No. So what is it exactly?

A Raniliella Testudo. Phylum: Arthropoda. Class: Hexapoda. Order: Orthoptera. Family: Acrididae.

That's a stone? It sounds more like a sort of grasshopper. Let's have a look.

I look over Pliny's shoulder at the photograph on the screen. It is a repulsive-looking fat brown and tan mottled creature, or stone, in the shape of a deformed tortoise, with grasshopper-like legs and a head like a small potato. It sits amongst real stones of a similar size and colour. The site is indisputably a CSIRO site, with the CSIRO logo. There is a map showing where the creature can be found within Australia. The only state where it has been confirmed is my own.

Pliny, I say, I withdraw my claim unconditionally.

I fear, says Pliny, that we now have too much evidence for that to be an option.