The Annals of History
Three Tales
Once upon a time, hundreds of millions of years ago in the dawn of the Paleozoic Era, all sorts of elaborately camouflaged insects of every imaginable description hopped, slithered, bounded, leapt, or somehow dragged their multicolored carapaces across the landscape. The reigning species was comprised of large insects fitted with tiny steam engines that powered their legs, making them capable of prodigious leaps up the evolutionary ladder; others, less evolutionarily fortunate in the engineering department, frolicked heedlessly on the still-warm soil of the young Earth. All this happened long before human beings were even a glimmer on the historical horizon, countless eons before what we so casually call civilization reared its ugly head. It was a great time to be alive, if you were a bug.
In a concerted effort toward making a statement that might rescue them from evolutionary oblivion, several hundred thousand representatives of the countless species of insects that had been hanging around gobbling up the landscape for thousands of years, decided that they needed to invent something truly significant. They got together nights and weekends and racked their minuscule arthropod brains. They zealously cogitated, pondered, ruminated, mused, and deliberated yet ultimately failed to come up with even the merest scintilla of an idea for hundreds of thousands of years.
Then one day, an unusually ambitious but physically repulsive young bug with absolutely no hope of gaining a foothold on the evolutionary ladder, tossed out the brilliant albeit disappointing thesis that insects were too inept, in the narrow sociological sense of the word, to invent anything ecologically pertinent or fun. Two of the more experienced insects, a pair of phlegmatic proto-mantises with formidable jaws and absolutely no sense of mercy, took murderous umbrage at this suggestion and proceeded to swiftly and noisily devour the offending contributor while maintaining their cold-blooded composure, and then proceeded to bloviate further on their own recently waxed philosophical justifications for the insects’ inability to create anything of a socially useful nature. They posited that insects haven't the time to bother with such nonsense because they were far too consumed with the struggle to get out from under the crushing weight of their unpronounceable Latin names.
At that moment, a ridiculously over-armored rhinoceros beetle of prodigious girth, in an obviously premeditated display of arthropod irritation, let loose with the loudest, most deadly belch imaginable. The immediate effect was so intense that several representatives of the smaller species, tightly massed, tiny, nearly invisible bugs immediately next to, under, or accidentally astride the behemoth beetle were killed instantly. Dozens of others, farther away from the toxic blast, were left dazed, lingering in a state of shock for up to three quarters of an hour (which is a long time for an insect) before succumbing to their injuries. Pandemonium broke out and countless other unidentified diptera, dermaptera, and strepsipterans still conscious bolted for the exits. A few of the hardier, less gas-permeable survivors chose to secrete themselves into some nearby wood to wait things out. Nothing was decided at this meeting.
Tale Too
Once upon an entirely different time, but not right on top of the same time in the previous narrative, there were some zealous insects who felt the urge to invent something of significance, so they got together with a cadre of other smarty-pants bugs, some smaller than themselves, some menacingly larger, and decided to form a “clud”. One of the more literate insects in the back of the room proposed that they form a “club”. A vote was taken and the assembly voted to start a clud because most bugs lack the lips to properly pronounce the letter “b”. There was much discussion back and forth, and even the tiniest, most instantly edible bugs had to admit that this was the sort of concept that, once instigated, would forever rid insects of the nagging fear of being socially embarrassed by their physical inadequacies. Then the rhinoceros beetle broke wind with a massive roar of its steaming entrails. Most of the insects were burned to a crisp outright and the rest died later in the hospital.
Tale Three
Once upon a time, much later than any other time recently referred to as having something “upon” it, whatever that is supposed to mean, there was a cadre of insects who considered themselves pretty clever for arthropods, so they decided to invent the slide rule. This, even at first glance, is ridiculous, because insects lack two of the essential requirements for the operation of such a device:
1. Thumbs
2. Numbers
As you might imagine, the insects were more than a little dismayed when they discovered that they didn’t have any actual use what they would have struggled so mightily to invent; When it was pointed out to them that the slide rule would have to be invented by a species with actual thumbs and actual use for such a device, the insects were visibly shaken. Nevertheless, they insisted that this shouldn’t prevent them from nurturing a sense of pride in the fact that they had attempted to make a contribution to science. They agonized through a depression that lasted for months, and they didn't even consider inventing anything else for about three hundred million years, during which time they completely lost interest in the socio-scientific field; and although they finally agreed, sadly, that this was acceptable, and that everybody was supposed to live happily ever after, an enormous rhinoceros beetle happened by and, well, you can imagine the rest.
I remember this piece. Hilarious !