savetheearth | ( 001: text/smartphone)

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( 001: text/smartphone)

Animals have far more sensitivity to their surroundings than humans do, they can sense changes in the environment that we can't. Canaries in coal mines. domesticated pets warning their owners of natural disasters to come. Survival of the fittest. "Natural selection conceived of as a struggle for life in which only those organisms best adapted to existing conditions are able to survive and reproduce." ... the point being that when things start going wrong, we're usually the last ones to notice.

... by the way, I heard that there were a lot of freak animal attacks last month. [ that, and he volunteers at an animal shelter. ] I can pretty much guess that's not unrelated to whatever all of this is about. [ although, to be sure, the details are still rather hazy for him. he can only make inferences and guesses at this point, though his are more or less in the right direction, at the very least.

and now for something completely different: ]

there's an animal following me around when I'm not in public places. a bird. I don't really know why ...

[ he won't directly come out and ask for it, but this is his way of soliciting advice on what to do about it. ]

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[All the talk of natural selection makes him think of class and one of his students. It makes him smile a little, though not actually connect the two. Because he has way too many students on this network, already.

Still. Corrections necessary.]

I'm afraid they weren't exactly animals, and yes, it's connected to all this. The bird may be, as well. Has it done anything to hurt you or bother you? Does it have any strange physical traits?

If they weren't animals, then what were they ...?

the bird is fine. except that it sometimes speaks Japanese.

[ ... he still can't believe there would ever come a day that he would claim he heard a bird speaking to him in foreign languages. ]

You may not believe me when I tell you. I was there, and I don't necessarily believe me. But they were some strange mutant dog-people. Bipedal, intelligent, wearing bullet-proof vests. There were animals earlier who had been mutated to have human-like physical traits, but no one has seen any of them in several weeks, at least.

[As for the bird... well. The speaking bit was new.]

Do you know what it's been saying in Japanese?

some people believe in ghosts and spirits. I think mutant animals is somewhat more believable than that.

I don't recognize all of the words, but
"The green that trails [...]"
"not small and not large, average is best"
"always unchanging, vigorous and gallant"

[ the wordplay on the song is somewhat lost on him, since he didn't consider that some of the words were the name of a place and not a literal translation. ]

That doesn't make much sense. It sounds like it might be part of some poem or a riddle, if anything. Maybe try looking that up?

[Lyall's suggestion to anything: do research.]

There may be ghosts involved in all this mess, as well :P Sorry to say.

I tried, but nothing as far as I can tell. I thought it might be a riddle, but some of the lines don't make sense for that. and I'm not very good at them, either ...

I don't believe in ghosts.
If they have feet, then they can't be.

[ or at least, that's what he learned when he was a kid. ]

[Lyall chuckles for a moment before responding.]

Strange dreams, the feeling of being watched, a wolf howl, and the smell of wet dog when there obviously wasn't an animal nearby-- shared by many people, independent of each other. "Ghost" seemed the best guess as to what it was. No one saw anything, feet or not, as far as I'm aware.

Or hallucinations. or actual dogs, just where they were hard to see. or the statues are doing things to us after all.

but until we know, I guess nobody knows.

I have a hard time believing all of us would have the same set of hallucinations, and I know for a fact there was no dog there. I would have found it. Besides, given other things that have happened, ghosts are hardly beyond belief, to me :)

Regardless, you're right, we don't have a lot of information yet, though we have more than when this all started.

I'm Randall Lyall, by the way. Local biology teacher. I know a lot of people aren't sharing their names, but it's a little late for me to do that at this point :P

They aren't, to me. but I guess that doesn't really matter ...

[ there's a lag, followed by a second message: ]

We've met before.
actually, we talked just recently ...

About feral animals.

[ mostly because he'd just watched a documentary on them and was a little curious. ]

[It takes Lyall a minute to put that together, first thinking that maybe this is Alex, since they last talked about Stella who, while not feral, is still an animal. But that doesn't makes sense. Who else could he have been...?

Then it takes him another minute to get past the "oh god not another one" stage of despair to actually respond.]

Presumably not the conversation about ferrets, then. I think you might have mentioned wild pigs, if I remember right.

I found out afterwards that there are populations of wild pigs in 3/4 of U.S. states. I was surprised.

It seems they are rather tenacious.

And no little vicious. Boar hunts are still considered pretty dangerous.

How long have you had a number? If you don't mind my asking.

A far cry from how we usually think of their domesticated counterparts.

About a week and a half.
and you?

Almost two months. It's been pretty crazy ever since.

We're actually starting up an after school club for all the students in high school and middle school tomorrow, if you want to come.

That's what I got the impression of. that a lot of things are happening and not many reasons why.

... I don't like crowds ...

Sadly, that's a good explanation. Lots of things, very little explanation.

There isn't likely to be more than five students there, seven at most. I don't think that qualifies as a crowd :)

Three is a crowd, as they say.

I don't think it will be as uncomfortable as you think. But you don't have to come, it was merely an invitation if you wanted to meet others on this network :)

... I'll think about it...

Isn't middle school a bit young... for people to get involved in something like this?

If it were up to me, I would say high school is a little young, myself. But it isn't up to me, I'm afraid. Whoever is making the decisions about who is involved and who isn't apparently has no problem with it.

[And Lyall disapproves. Strongly.]

Maybe the people who are chosen are the ones capable of handling it.

But judging by the kinds of posts I see on this network... I wonder about that.

I wonder, too. Why chose, of all people, a biology teacher, after all. Right? There must be some connection, but none of us know yet what it is.

So it all goes back to us not knowing much about what's going on, in the end ...

For now, unfortunately so.

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handcuff - 2013-05-30 02:42 (UTC) - Expand

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