The trouble started with the food supply. Not supply, really. No, the trouble started with the food shortage.
The pond had always been covered over with algae, a layer that obscured where water ended and land began. In the marshiness around the pond, the distinction between land and water was academic anyway. But marshiness won't fill a hungry belly the way algae does. So in surveying his home, the irregular pond with its tall reeds and wind-whispered surface, Apple Snail tended to notice the algae in the way we notice roofs on our houses and windows in their frames. We only truly notice them when they're not there.
And the algae was most certainly not there. It had been so plentiful. It had been an ocean contained in a pond, a life-sustaining, viridescent sea of sumptuous banqueting.
Now, in its place, swam a sea of fellow snails, sharing all of Apple Snail's alleles, down to the one that patterned his left side with flesh tones above and a half-circle below, making his left profile look for all the world like a half-closed eye. No matter the time of day, Apple Snail seemed sleepy, only partially aware of what was going on around him.
Maybe that's a true impression. Maybe he wasn't hip to what was going on. But how often do we all fail to face a problem until its many faces get up in our face and demand to be seen?
All those faces, exactly like Apple Snail's own, had finally gotten his attention. He had reproduced asexually all through the spring, because it seemed the thing to do. And then, whenever his offspring had matured a bit, they started reproducing asexually, and what had been something to do became something he had to do to keep up. It wouldn't be right if one of his clones out-cloned him. No, not right at all.
All these clones were taking their toll. And Apple Snail had no idea what to do about it.
Until she showed up. Another apple snail, but with a shell rippled and colored like freshly churned butter. Butter Snail laughed when Apple Snail told her his name.
"What a misnomer!" Her laughter rippled too.
"Whaddaya mean?"
"All these other snails, they're your clones, right?"
"Ummm." Apple Snail looked around, making sure she wasn't talking about some other snails that might have snuck into the pond while they had been chatting. "I guess so."
"Apple Snails are gonochoristic, One-Eye! You can't be an apple snail if you clone yourself. We real apple snails have to have sex to make more of us." On the word sex, her voice dropped, as though she was keeping a secret from the rest of the snails.
She needn't have bothered. Apple Snail was more observant than his clones, who all seemed a little slow. They only paid attention to the algae in front of their faces. But even with his observant habits, Apple Snail only knew a bit about sex, mostly from overheard conversations between the excitable ducks that sometimes bathed in the pond, scattering algae and snails with every frenzied wing-flap. Sex involved at least two ducks, maybe more, and sounded just as frenzied as the flapping. Hell, maybe the wing-flapping was sex. Except that Apple Snail was pretty sure sex included a she-duck and the ducks talking about sex were all boisterous drakes.
So Butter Snail wasted her breathless delivery of the word on a clueless audience. Equally wasted were the huge eyes she batted at Apple Snail as they chatted. Apple Snail was finally moved to ask, despite his worries about the improprieties of drawing attention to someone's personal tics, if she maybe needed a rinse or if he could help her get something out of her eye, maybe with his long toothy tongue.
Butter Snail didn't answer, just batted her eyes again. Apple Snail didn't find that very helpful. Really, Butter Snail was being far more helpful than even she knew. Apple Snail needed to get used to being confused, and quickly. For now, there was a woman, and this woman had brought sex to his recently barren pond.
Check out Matt's take on this issue of the JWP!
12 years ago
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