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Amphibian. Carla Gunn
Читать онлайн.Название Amphibian
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781770560130
Автор произведения Carla Gunn
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Ingram
Then I tried to think nice thoughts. I thought of the animals on Reull. I thought of Whirly Eye who has one big eye but also little eyes at the tips of his tentacles so that when he whirls around he can see in all directions. He is never surprised by what may be around a corner because all he does is put out one of his tentacles to look for danger. Whirly Eyes have predators but they’re hardly ever caught, not even at night, because the eyes take turns sleeping – half of them sleep during the daytime and half during the night.
That made me think of dolphins here on earth. The left and right sides of a dolphin’s brain take turns sleeping so that one part can watch for danger. Whales and seals and manatees do this too but no other mammals do.
There are thirty-five different species in the family Delphinidae and five of them are critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Species. Most of the others could be in big trouble too but scientists don’t have enough information about them to know for sure.
Lots of different species of birds can sleep one half a brain at a time. The eye that is controlled by the part of the brain that is awake stays open and the other one droops closed. If birds sleep together, the brains of the birds at the ends of the rows sleep one part at a time but both sides of the brains of the birds in the centre sleep because they feel safe.
This thought made me think of feeling safe and then I wondered if Cuddles was feeling safe. I started to worry that he was lonely there in the aquarium cage without any of his species around to listen to. Last summer, my mom and I went to a marsh-mallow roast in the amphibian park where there are three different types of frogs. As it was getting dark, they made a lot of noise. But for Cuddles in his lonely cage in the quiet school there would be nothing for him to see or hear at the very time he’s most awake. That made me worried and sad, so I got up to find my mother.
I found her working in her study. She didn’t even look up from her computer because she knew it was me behind her. When I was little she told me not to make faces at her, that she had an eye on the back of her head and could see me. I believed her because anableps are fish that have two eyes to see the world above the water and two eyes to see below.
Before I even said a word, my mother sighed. ‘What is it, Phin? Why are you up when I put you to bed over an hour ago? How are you going to do well in school tomorrow if you’re tired? Don’t you know I have a lot of work to do after I put you to bed? Don’t you understand that?’
She said it in her sandpaper voice and she didn’t even have her ‘I’m a ticking time bomb’ sign around her neck. She sometimes uses that sign to signal to me that I’d better not give her a hard time. I hate it when she asks me a lot of questions in a row because then I have to remember them in order so that I can answer them in order. It’s hard to remember after about three or four and it’s even harder to answer them all really quickly because most often she doesn’t give me time.
I complained to her about this once and she said that some questions are rhetorical, which means that they’re asked for a purpose other than to get answers to them. She said for example that asking ‘Why me?’ when something bad happens is an expression of emotion more than a question that you want answered. But when I say ‘Why me?’ I usually really am looking for an answer. But mostly I never get one so maybe that makes it rhetorical too.
The problem with rhetorical questions is that I usually don’t know which ones are real and which are not. So the answers to my mother’s questions were:
1. I am worried about Cuddles.
2. I can’t sleep.
3. I’ll be fine, school is easy.
4. Yes.
5. Yes.
But all I ended up saying was, ‘I can’t sleep because I’m worried about Cuddles’ – which I guess answers two of her questions at once.
She said, ‘Phin, for the love of God, Cuddles will be fine. He’s safe in his aquarium.’
I said, ‘The being-in-the-aquarium part is the part that worries me. And I think he might be in pain because of it.’
She said, ‘Phin, he’s a frog! A frog! He doesn’t even know where he is.’
I said, ‘How do you know that? How does anyone know that?’
She said, ‘Phin, you have to stop anthropomorphizing. Do you know what that means?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But why is that wrong? Why the heck do you think animals don’t have pain and feel scared? They do, you know. The Green Channel has lots of shows about that.’
‘Phin, please – it’s late. Just go back to your bed and try to think nice thoughts.’
I said, ‘I’m all out. And I can’t sleep. I know this is one of those nights that I won’t be able to sleep – not even a little bit.’ Then I had a sudden thought and ran to Fiddledee’s litter box and checked for red poop because I hadn’t checked it for two days. I lifted some of it with the scoop and looked really carefully. It looked mostly black, which was a relief.
My mom said, ‘For the love of God, Phin, get up those stairs to bed.’ I ran up fast in front of her because she didn’t look happy and I thought maybe her brain cells might go all wonky and she might pounce on me or something. But then she sighed and said, ‘Let’s go to bed and get some sleep.’ She let me climb into her bed, which is very big, a king’s bed.
I said, ‘I love you, Mom.’
She said, ‘I love you too, Phin. Now go to sleep.’
I didn’t say anything else after that because I wanted her to not be mad at me and I wanted her to be happy and I thought maybe this was as good as I was going to get tonight. I snuggled close to her and she put her arm around me and kissed the back of my neck.
But do you know what I think? I think that some people can’t stand to think that animals feel a lot like human beings. I think it’s hard enough for people like my mom to write and hear about what’s happening to other human beings around the world – let alone other animals too. Knowing that so many more of the earth’s animals feel sadness and pain is just way too much hurt for their minds to let them see.
My mother woke me up this morning saying, ‘Good morning, sleeping beauty.’ She kissed my cheek and I opened my eyes. She had a pad and a pencil and said, ‘What can I get you this morning, sir?’
I said, ‘How about toast and peanut butter?’ I must have been still sleepy because then I remembered I’d decided not to eat peanut butter. Last night I checked the ingredients on the jar and it contains palm oil. I told my mother to forget the toast and peanut butter because of the palm oil.
She said, ‘But you’re not allergic to palm oil.’
I said, ‘Don’t you even care about the orangutans?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked my mother. I told her that the peanut butter we have is made with palm oil and that palm oil comes from palm-tree plantations that have been built where the orangutans used to live. Now those orangutans are endangered because so much of their habitat has been destroyed.
‘But, Phin,’ she said, ‘we already have the peanut butter and so we’re not going to help the monkeys by not eating it.’
‘They’re not monkeys,’ I said, ‘they’re primates. And it’s the principle of the matter.’
My mother sighed and said, ‘Okay, Phin, if you don’t want peanut butter, what do you want?’ But then she remembered she was pretending to be a waitress and her voice got nice again. She said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, we’re out of orangutan-free peanut butter this morning, is there something else that you might like?’
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