But then Mr. Devilsticks got into the kitchen; the ship’s heavily tattooed, heavily bearded cook caught the monkey flinging pots and pans into the sea.
That night, an especially delectable aroma wafted up from the kitchen.
“What do you think Chef is cooking this evening, old boy?” I asked Gibear, my stomach rumbling. Soon we were called to the table, and the cook arrived, lugging a big stew pot and wearing a grim little smile.
“Tonight we enjoy a new dish, a specialty of the house,” he said. “I call it Curried Devilsticks Surprise.”
Two things happened after that:
1. The crew devoured every single bite of the monkey stew, even crunching up the bones.
2. Gibear turned snow-white the very next day.
This is only natural: even human hair sometimes turns gray or white overnight when a person experiences a trauma. And after all, Gibear had grown quite fond of Mr. Devilsticks. So had I. But as Mother Wiggins used to tell me: one should never play tricks on a tattooed chef.
I am especially protective of dear Gibear now. The abrupt demise of Mr. Devilsticks makes me wonder how much time I have left with my own precious pet: after all, I do not know how old he was when I found him in the Amazon over twenty years ago. Let us face facts in their entirety: I still do not even know what he is.
What I do know: I am keeping him far away from the ship’s kitchen.
72. Cape Town is a major port city on the southern tip of what is now known as South Africa.
October 1873
The Maldive Islands73
In Which I Discover … Hermit Crab Humans
(Eremita Crustacea Populi)
What a glorious spot to begin our Asia tour: I can hardly believe the color of the sea here—such a bright blue that one almost fears it will sting you. The sand resembles ground-up, sun-bleached bones; I absolutely feel the crunch of history beneath my feet as I walk across the Maldivian beaches. The boat’s captain did not want to drop us off at this desolate outpost. He told me that there is nothing green on these islands, and no one could live long here.
“Well,” I said. “Where most people see nothing, I see life. After all, atolls themselves were once alive.74 I happen to know for a fact that ancient cultures and creatures thrived here, and I intend to learn about them.”75
So the captain left our party of two—now sadly minus poor Mr. Devilsticks—here under the burning sun and sailed away; he promised that he would return for me in a few weeks.
A large seashell scampered across the beach. Gibear let out a yelp and leaped up onto my head. I laughed and picked up the shell. “It is just a hermit crab,” I told him.
Now, I love hermit crabs: these resourceful, soft-bodied creatures “wear” discarded seashells to protect themselves, carrying around their shell houses on their backs. As they grow, they move into bigger shells, leaving their old shells behind for another crab to use.
Once the boat disappeared over the horizon, other shells came to life and jetted around the beach, as though we had stumbled into a massive hermit-crab ballroom during a waltz. Gibear—who had once bravely tamed fierce bears in America—refused to come down off my head: I now had a white-furred bouffant to match my mustache.
I set up camp and began my exploration. This is what I uncovered: shells, and more shells, and even more shells after that. This is what I did not uncover: anything else. I began to wish the captain would come back early. Perhaps I had grown addled from wearing a fur hat in all of that hot sun, but I started feeling bad for those homeless little crabs, forced to wear those hand-me-down houses all the time. So I began to construct for them a giant sandcastle to live in. I dug a great big moat, and built the main walls out of sand and small shells. Soon this castle boasted many fine turrets with shells pointing up toward the heavens. The hermit crabs enjoyed the show tremendously; several dozen of them settled into the castle’s main hall.
Delighted, I decided to build them a little town. I made them a little shell church, and then a shell stable, and even a little shell store, in which they could shop for new shell homes; soon the town had at least twenty turreted buildings. Naturally, this project required quite a few shells. So I dug deeper into the atoll beach. Suddenly I realized that the shells I had begun unearthing were much larger than the ones lying about on top of the sand. I dug up a shell the size of a grapefruit, and then, a foot deeper, I found one the size of a watermelon.
The deeper I dug, the bigger the shells grew. Ten feet into the ground, I found a shell the size of a horse—and when I looked inside that shell, both my fur hat and I let out a terrific yelp.
There lay the petrified remains of a creepy, human-sized hermit crab.
I dusted off the fossilized body, which consisted of a human torso with arms and legs jutting out on all sides. Eyestalks stemmed from its head; its back was firmly wedged into the shell.
The hermit-crab town was immediately forgotten. I began to excavate like mad, and this is what I learned about this Maldivian species: around two hundred million years old, these creatures had originally been the size of regular hermit crabs—which are usually no larger than a walnut (I found their fossilized remains as well, and I have to confess that they were rather endearing). These early Hermit Crab Humans could not see very well—as evidenced by their absolutely tiny eye sockets—and any old shell sufficed as a home, as long as it provided protection.
But then, as the species evolved, the Hermit Crab Humans’ eyesight improved, for the newer fossils had larger eye sockets. They clearly began to notice who was wearing pretty shells and who donned shabby ones, and all of them vied to wear increasingly attractive “homes.” And the abodes became roomier, too (which ended up playing an important role in their eventual fate). In fact, there is a direct correlation between the fossils with larger eye sockets and the size and glamour of the “houses” they wore! Nothing seems to change, despite the passage of time and the evolution of biology: even today, large houses give the impression that the people inside are wealthy and powerful. The Hermit Crab Humans must have been thinking along the same lines.
Evidence shows that they ate a great deal to make themselves fatter, with the purpose of moving into roomier, fancier shells. This behavior went on for quite some time, and soon the island became very flashy as everyone showed off their grand, ostentatious shell homes for each other. One can hardly believe some of the houses I uncovered in that beach!
However, soon a problem arose: the Hermit Crab Humans began to outgrow the biggest shells available on the atoll. They had forgotten the most important function of the shells in the first place: protection against predators. And now the Hermit Crab Humans could no longer tuck even their legs into the shells, much less blend innocently into the beach.
Giant dinosaur-like birds apparently caught wind of the situation; they swooped down over the atoll and plucked the Hermit Crab Humans up by their meaty legs and gulped them down with gusto. (Gibear uncovered one of the predator bird skeletons on the other side of the atoll, and there were at least ten fossilized devoured Hermit Crab Human carcasses inside its remains.) With no source of shelter—no caves, no trees, nothing—the species had only one choice: they buried themselves deep down in the rough sand, hoping that the dino birds would forget about them.
Not a chance.
Those birds must have hovered and lurked and cawed impatiently, and eventually the Hermit Crab Humans died deep beneath the sand, where I found them millions of years later.
Suddenly, a desert-y mirage of Mother Wiggins wavered above the sand.
“Mother,” I wailed. “Can’t you leave me alone—even out here on a desert island in the middle of the Indian Ocean?” She certainly has been getting around for a lady who has never officially set foot outside her village in Shropshire!
“Hmph,” she said, peering down inside the Hermit Crab Humans’ grave. “That is what you get for trying to keep up appearances all the time. In my opinion, the bigger the palace, the more miserable the peop
le are who live there.”
And then she disappeared.
73. The Maldives are a series of atolls in the Indian Ocean. An atoll is a ring-shaped coral reef or a string of closely spaced small coral islands, enclosing or nearly enclosing a shallow lagoon.
74. Coral is indeed considered a live organism.
75. Until the discovery of Dr. Wiggins’s journals, the first excavation of the Maldives was credited to a British man named H. C. P. Bell, who was shipwrecked on the islands in 1879—six years after Dr. Wiggins’s trip. Once again, Dr. Wiggins has set the historical record right.
May 1874
Rajasthan, India76
In Which I Discover … Rainbow-Spitting Cobras
(Iris Sputo Serpentes)
At last, we have arrived on mainland India. The ship captain dutifully returned to the Maldives to retrieve us, and then deposited us here. My goodness—one could spend his entire life in India and likely unearth thousands of the ancient world’s secrets. While Gibear and I were shopping in a bazaar for fresh excavation supplies, I was invited by a snake charmer to experience the wonders of his trained animal.
“Look deep into the snake’s eyes, and you will see a faraway world,” he told me.
“My good sir,” I said. “I hardly believe that.”
“Oh, but it is true,” said the man, holding his basket, which contained an allegedly magical cobra. “I am the best charmer in Jaipur.77 My snake will hypnotize you, and you will see a past life.”
Quite a crowd had amassed around us. I sat down on the carpet; the charmer placed the basket in front of me and took off the top. He began to play on a little flute. Slowly a deadly cobra rose out of the basket; it spread its hood and weaved in time to the music, back and forth. I was about to protest that this was all rather ridiculous, and point out that snakes cannot even hear music—but before I could get the sentence out of my mouth, the bazaar seemed to melt away before my eyes. Suddenly I found myself sitting in a bright yellow desert instead.
“Where am I?” I cried. “Gibear! Where are you?”
My words echoed across the dunes and thinned out over the sands. I heard a rustling sound from beyond a sand hill; to my horror, an enormous cobra slinked over the horizon and in my direction, its iridescent skin shining blue and green and pink in the sun. Just as it reached me and reared up, I let out a scream and threw my arm over my eyes.
“You can take your arm down now,” called a familiar voice.
I opened my eyes: the huge snake had vanished; the yellow sand had disappeared. I was back in the bazaar. Everyone around us cheered and clapped. The charmer put away his flute and placed the top back on the snake-filled basket.
“I saw a huge, rainbow-colored snake,” I told him, quite shaken. “In a desert with bright yellow sand. I have never seen sand that color in my life.”
“You have seen the Haldighati Mountain,” he said. “A very famous and ancient place. Its soil is the color of turmeric.78 Your vision tells you that you must visit the mountain, where you will find something very important. But beware: rainbows are bad luck.”
Well, that rather confused me: where I come from, rainbows are considered emblems of good fortune and beauty. But nevertheless, I left for this mountain the very next day.
It took several weeks to reach the mysterious Haldighati Mountain. My vision about the bright yellow sand proved correct: it stained Gibear’s snow-white fur and transformed him into a ball of turmeric-colored fluff. We set up camp in a shady nook of the mountain, and I began my general excavation.
As I dug out a big pit, I heard a telltale bark (Giii-bear!) from somewhere up the slope. I found Gibear entangled in a strange, thick, rope-like net, which stuck to him like glue. Needless to say, I was forced (again!) to scissor up Gibear’s fur to free him. Investigation of the immediate area yielded up many such nets lurking below the surface of the sand. And underneath these nets lay the petrified bones of hundreds of different creatures, as though they had been standing in a crowd when the net had been dropped down on top of them. What did it all mean?
Just then, I looked up and was treated to quite a bizarre sight. Gibear, who was standing on a slope several hundred yards away, glimmered with every color of the rainbow. It was most jarring the way he insisted on constantly changing his appearance, I must say.
But then, when he galloped toward me, his chopped-up coat turned yellow again.
And behind him, where he had just been standing, a strange rainbow shimmered above the ground. When I approached it and passed my hand through the spectrum, my fingers sparkled with colors.
How curious! Most rainbows are caused when rays of light pass through droplets of moisture, which is why we see so many rainbows in the sky when the sun comes out just after a rainstorm has passed. But here we were in the middle of a bone-dry desert; this rainbow appeared to be glowing upward from the ground. Once I began to dig on the site, it did not take me long to find out why. The rainbow marked the grave of a truly horrifying ancient creature.
When I eventually reveal my findings to the world, I will introduce the creature in this manner: “Imagine that you are a scaly little lizard,” I will say, “out for an afternoon scamper with your family, minding your own business. It’s a very hot day; you’re all quite hungry and cantankerous. Life feels rather grim as you scavenge around for food.
“But then, seemingly out of nowhere, you see a beautiful rainbow shooting up into the sky above you. And then another, and another after that. Soon quite a few of your lizard and animal neighbors have gathered around you to behold the spectacle. Colors dazzle in the sky; everyone around you is in awe.
“And then, suddenly, that rainbow transforms before your eyes into a terrible net, which billows down over you and roots you to the ground. This was the handiwork of the Rainbow-Spitting Cobras, those awful, sneaky beasts.”
Everyone listening will shiver and shake in their boots, and they shall be correct to do so.
Now, today’s spitting cobras are quite dreadful in their own right: they shoot sprays of poisonous venom from their fangs that can blind their prey from many feet away. But the ancient Rainbow-Spitting Cobras—who lived perhaps 225 million years ago—were particularly nasty: these vile, enormous creatures hid themselves behind rocks and spat out spectacular sticky-net-filled rainbows to lure in their prey with a glorious magic show. (The snakes’ remains reveal an apparatus similar to contemporary spiders’ spinners, which enable them to spin their sticky silken webs.) Once caught in that sticky net, no creature could escape—and the Rainbow-Spitting Cobras would slither in, devour the animals whole, and spit out the bones.
How did the species die out? Well, the word must have gotten around that rainbows had become a terrible sign of doom, and that if you saw one, you should scuttle away in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. No one could be fooled into watching the “shows” anymore, and the Rainbow-Spitting Cobras eventually went out of business, to put it nicely.
As Mother Wiggins used to say: all that glitters is not gold. In fact, I would even argue that most of what glitters is not gold.
It is such a shame that so many creatures here had to learn this lesson the hard way.
76. This northeastern part of India was once home to the Indus Valley civilization, which is often considered one of the world’s first and oldest civilizations; thus Dr. Wiggins’s presence here makes perfect sense.
77. Also known as the Pink City, Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan.
78. Turmeric is a distinctive, bright yellow spice, from which this mountain range likely derives its name: the prefix haldi means “turmeric” in Hindi.
March 1875
The Bay of Bengal79
In Which I Discover … the Curious Pearl-Tree Forest
(Margarita Arbor Silva)
Maybe in retrospect it was not such a good idea after all. But, I reasoned at the time, I have spent quite a bit of time on boats: How hard could it be to sail one? After all, I had a most reliable fir
st mate—Admiral Gibear—and an impeccable sense of direction. What could possibly go wrong?
We set off across the Bay of Bengal; India disappeared behind us, and soon our little boat rocked gently on the open sea. Our destination: Australia, another land rich with animal life. I became so inspired by the beauty of the water that I composed a little song:
Way out here, in the Bay of Bengal,
Sails a happy man who has it all—
A lovely boat—
Some Gum Tree Wax—
A strange little creature with fur like flax—
The world has shown its oldest secrets to me—
And I share them with the deep blue sea.
Ooooph! Suddenly my little boat hit something in the water and stopped. The wind rippled the sail and still nothing happened. I got out a little paddle and tried to push us along, but something beneath the surface seemed quite determined to keep us wedged there. I gingerly heaved myself over the side of the boat and found that we had been snared by the branches of a peculiar underwater tree.
“Fetch my hatchet, Gibear,” I called. “I shall have to chop us to freedom.”
Gibear’s head appeared over the ledge of the boat; he held the little ax in his mouth. Just as I reached up for it, he accidentally dropped it into the water with a disheartening plunk.
The Wondrous Journals of Dr. Wendell Wellington Wiggins Page 12
