“The thing is,” said the crocodile, “I
look old—wouldn’t you say? Absolutely dinosauric: the lizardy corruscaded hide,
the mindless devouring slithering predatory machine, slit-eyed, cold blooded,
everybody’s idea of basic prehistoric ancient primary essence.”
“I am the model for all that,” said
the shark, “millions of years before the likes of you, before even flowering
began on earth. I’m not even bone but primeval cartilage, the reigning monster
of the deeps.”
“You protoplasmic peasant,” said the
Emperor crab, “you’re completely un-regal and inconsequent, next to me. Did you
catch my name, you late-coming hulk? Learn what antique royal lineage really
is.”
“What is all this hydrostatic
priority?” asked the ant. “We are the teeming lords of the realm, for eons and
eons and in continual hordes.”
“My,” said the bacterium, “such
interspecial virulence! I’m counting on it to bring down your resistance. All
of you together make me laugh. Fact is, we—” he was sub-dividing as he
spoke—“in time have laid low everyone. We were here first, numerously, and we
will be the last.”
Moral: Geneology—it’s not history, it’s bragging rights.
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