Suspicion

Ageless was alarmed by Kobo's letter. He was sure he wouldn't look as handsome flat. He decided to go to the museum straight away, and see how difficult it would be to steal two eyes. He could work out how to fit them onto Kobo later.

He ambled over from the library to the museum. It was hot and he proceeded slowly. On the way he amused himself by wondering what would have happened if Butler had won the war. He rather wished that Kobo had spelled it with a double t. Buttler. If Buttler won the war he would kick butts. He thought that would be very funny....for an American. For himself, he always preferred the term bottom.

He entered the museum. Ahh. It was refreshingly cool. And there was a thick red carpet on the grand central staircase. He must remember to tell Kobo. No he mustn't. Was it him who'd said there wouldn't be a carpet, or was it her? Sometimes he got confused about who'd said what.

He shuffled up to the information board. Fossils were on Level Three. He moved towards the staircase, unaware that the information officer was eying him suspiciously.

Changes and Extinctions

We went to a lecture at the SA Museum last night, I said to Pliny. You would have enjoyed it. It was about the extinction of birds in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

I know, said Pliny. I was there.

Were you ? I said, surprised. We didn't see you. Did you sit at the back?

No, said Pliny, but I sat several rows behind you.

Why didn't you come up and sit with us? I asked.

Because I had been given a glass of wine, said Pliny, and I didn't wish to flaunt it.

What! You were given a glass of wine! I thought this year it was reserved for special guests.

It is, said Pliny. I became an honorary special guest after I introduced myself. Naturally they had all heard of me. I was the first writer to have written of the extinction of a species. That was the plant Silphium, which became extinct during my life time. Of course, I had also had something to say on the disappearance of certain birds.

Something really useful, I suppose, I said nastily.

They would not have found it useful, admitted Pliny, had they remembered what it was. It was regarding the birds known to us as Sangualis and Immusulus, which, it was asserted, had not been seen in Rome for quite some time. I wrote that I thought it more likely that, since a general lack of interest in all knowledge had prevailed of late, no notice had been taken of them.

Do you think that is why the Dusky Woodswallow, the Painted Button-quail and the Restless Flycatcher are no longer seen in great numbers in the Mount Lofty Ranges ? I asked.

It may not be, said Pliny.

Well, you have changed your tune, I said.

These are modern times, he replied.

Sponge Crab and Decorator Crab

I was telling Pliny the Elder about my visit to the new Biodiversity Gallery in the SA Museum.

It was good, I said.

What did you learn? he asked.

That put me on the spot.

Umm, I learned ......

I tried to remember what I had learned. I had seen a great deal. A number of stuffed birds and snakes that I seemed to have seen before in earlier galleries. Drawers full of spiders and beetles and butterflies on pins. Numerous excited children and their parents. But what had I learned?

Suddenly I remembered the brightly coloured models of the Sponge Crab and the Decorator Crab.

There is a crab called the Sponge Crab, I said knowledgeably. It carries a sponge about on its back as a shelter. The sponge grows with the crab. If the sponge gets stolen, the crab will try very hard to get it back. If it can't, it will find itself another sponge.

Fascinating, said Pliny the Elder. What else?

There is another crab, called the Decorator Crab, that is equally strange, I told him. This crab uses snippers to snip off bits of seaweed that it finds, and sticks them to its back with glue that it secretes from a gland. It does this as a means of camouflage.

Snippers? said Pliny sharply. Where does it get the snippers?

Oops! I said. I can't remember that.