INDEPENDENT NEWS

Irish Eyes: If Your Friends Had Six Legs

Published: Mon 13 Aug 2001 08:54 AM
Irish Eyes with Greg Meylan in Dublin
If Your Friends Had Six Legs
Imagine if the opposite to Metamorphosis were to come about one morning and everyone but yourself was turned into a some kind of huge and monstrous insect.
In the immediate aftermath of such a distortion it would befall you to become, without second thought, the naturalist and walk the world with a pen and paper noting genus and species and working out the specific functions of the creatures of this new animal kingdom.
You'd have to do this because anything else would be far too terrifying or lonely. Really it would be very important to try and connect to the newness in some way shape or form if only for the sake of your sanity.
Things would be quite different from how they are now of course.
Shoe manufactures would be delighted at the concept of six feet for a start and televisions would change to suit those with compound eyes. It wouldn't take long before advertisers were beaming different images into each of the 347 portals of the monstrous insect described by yourself as the common house-fly kind.
When it rained all sorts of little scurriers would come out of their holes in the ground for fear of drowning down below.
The dear dung beetle would work at regurgitating the past excrescence of the new insect culture into something new. Kind of like retro-fashion and design, only with an exoskeleton.
Some of those with great hairy feelers would want to spread the news their wavy antennae would be constantly collecting. Other insects with great bendy back legs would become the bouncers and keep unshod slaters out of the better kind of establishments.
Democracy would go right out the window, but life would go on, in a sometimes brutal kind of way.
Eventually of course you'd grow tired of the insects and as in the story turn your back on them all, coming to some conclusion which would be very private and probably a little sad.
- feedback to paloona@yahoo.com

Next in Comment

US Lessons For New Zealand’s Health System: Profiteering, Hospital Adverse Events And Patient Outcomes
By: Ian Powell
Israel’s Argument At The Hague: We Are Incapable Of Genocide
By: Binoy Kampmark
View as: DESKTOP | MOBILE © Scoop Media