Picture by Alicja Fenigsen, see my links
Peter Billig
MR. VOGEL & HIS ANIMALS
A Saul Vogel mystery
Vogel was reading his paper in the sitting- room. Suddenly, he emitted an exclamation of surprise:
"How can it be!? Or am I nuts?…” He turned to me: “I need to talk about animals."
I put whatever I was holding back on the table and took the armchair opposite his.
"Tell me whether my reasoning is correct," he continued. "If all the herbivores of the savannas – the antelopes, zebras, giraffes and so on – died out, the carnivores out there – the lions, hyenas, cheetahs and so on – would follow?"
"Inexorably. There is a nutritional connection between these groups."
“But would it affect the carnivores of North America – wolves, coyotes and pumas?”
“No way! There is no dietary or even physical connection between those groups.”
"A hypothetical demise of all tapirs would have no impact on the well-being of echidnas?"
"Correct again. No connection at all, they live on separate continents."
"Then how do you explain this?"
He showed me two articles:
DEMISE OF A SPECIES was about a genus of rodents to be found only on one tiny island off California shore. The animals perished because the owner developed it. The last pair has been moved to a zoo, but both died there without offspring on 15 August 2006, killed by a stray cat.
DEMISE OF YET ANOTHER SPECIES was about a genus of bats found only in a few caves in South Africa. They have been under scientific supervision and their numbers were mounting. Last seen alive on 15 August 2006, they were seemingly doing well. Next day the researchers found them dead: not a single specimen survived. A very scrupulous postmortem unearthed no cause of death. It was as if all the bats simultaneously got fed up with life and died.
"How did the demise of the herbivorous rodents in California influence the dire fate of the insectivorous bats down in South Africa?" Vogel asked.
"It didn't. It was a coincidence in time. Each day a species or two of animals die out in our modern world! Every child knows that. We are vandals."
"It wasn't us who did these bats in, though. There is more to it than meets the eye."
"A natural cause the scientists didn’t think of and, consequently, didn’t test for, perhaps?"
"Not all natural laws are known," he replied thoughtfully, "and I propose to discover this one."
"Good luck!" but I did not expect him to succeed. How does one go about finding a new law of Nature?
Vogel seemed to know how. He asked Voss to drive over for a consultation. Voss is a bright engineer specializing in electronics. They met during Voss's hobo period and stayed friends since. Voss loves Vogel's ideas and is eager to give him the technical assistance to make them work.
He arrived at Domicile, our house in a big forest owned by Vogel. It was spring and they went for a walk into the green freshness of the new leaves and the sweet chirpings of multifarious birds.
When they came back, Vogel's Porsche got evicted from the garage and Voss's van, full of parts and tools, moved in, a workshop on wheels. As the workaholic was toiling there, I brought him lunch daily, but "bio-recorder/ player" was all he would say about the contraption he was making. Portable, it looked like a cross between a laptop and a tape-recorder, with a smart dish-shaped foldable antenna.
Then it was ready, Vogel told me to hold the fort, put the machine in his car and was gone.
During his absence, Vogel kept sending me two postcards apiece from zoos the world over. The first would say: Greetings from [so and so zoo], making progress. The second: Ditto. Each was a photo of an animal, bought in the "zoovenir" shop, but the animals were oddly paired. From the Beijing Zoo he sent a panda on the first card and some kind of pig on the other, from the Nairobi Zoo – an aardvark and a penguin.
I received over a hundred of such pairs. Obviously, they were meant as clues to Vogel’s work. I could see no logic in the choice of the species, though, and did not care much, having sufficiently to do with my own projects. I contented myself with tracking his chaotic movements on a globe.
Finally, eight months after he left, he phoned from Brazil about workers to arrive at my end the next day. They did, built a hothouse and instructed me how to operate the heating system: it was winter outside and the temperature inside was to be kept at 30°C (100°F). Florists' vans brought tropical plants. They were put inside the glasshouse and I was instructed how to care for them. A landscaper arrived with rocks and soil and used the plants to create a mini-jungle. Vogel arrived and a cage was brought in the greenhouse and he took me inside: hummingbirds were hovering and sucking nourishment at feeding stations. They were beautiful: green bodies with red wings and yellow heads, all with metallic-like shine.
"It's a shame to jail them,” I said enchanted with their humming and breathtaking beauty.
"I don't want to jail them, I have to."
He instructed me how to prepare their liquid food and went to sleep off his jetlag.
Next morning I awoke with a shout, sprang out of bed and felt so much energy, so much life in me that I had to do something extreme – or I would burst! In my pajamas, I jumped through the window shattering the pane and landing in a snow-drive outside. I got up and, howling like a wolf, I ran into the woods. I ran and ran in deep snow – there was no limit to my energy; I felt I could accomplish any physical feat. I scared some deer, caught up with them, overtook them and turning my head back I stuck my tongue out to them! Flabbergasted, the kindly animals stopped in their tracks and so did I – because I collided with a tree.
Concussed and laying in the snow I saw before me a mini player: open, the cassette beside. There was adhesive tape with strands of my hair glued to the contrivance. Clearly, the tape had been used to fasten it to my head while I was asleep. The player must have caused my hyperactive behavior. Now the device was torn off by the impact and nonfunctional. I felt boundlessly nonfunctional, too – and went out.
Picture by Alicja Fenigsen, see my links
As I regained consciousness, I was lying on our toboggan, wrapped in blankets and tugged by our snowmobile. Vogel must have tracked me. I was aching all over but not enough to keep me awake.
When I awoke I was in my own bed and it was noon of the next day. There was plastic sheeting on the damaged window: it had happened, then. In my head, I reviewed the “reel” of the events of the day before and I understood: it was Vogel who had affixed the player in order to make me an unwitting part – a guinea pig, a lab-rat – to a dangerous experiment. I could have been killed! Damn him!
I felt an urge to punch him, but I only stood up with effort, every fiber in my body aching as after an enormous physical exertion. No punching was possible. Slowly, I put on my dressing gown and wobbled to the sitting-room; I could hear him there busying himself with crockery and cutlery.
Words like "two-faced bastard" were on my lips, as I hobbled in, but seeing guilt on his face and my favorite foods on the table I ended up calling him a "serious asshole".
"That I am," he said, "but you are in need of serious nourishment."
That I was. The gourmet food Vogel is so good at was delicious. When we finished I was sufficiently restored to content myself with a demand for an explanation.
“Recall the dead rodents and bats?” he obliged. “My first thought was that the rodents kept the bats alive by their sheer existence: when they died, the bats died. But how exactly do they do that?"
"Sending postcards, one species to another?"
"Bio-waves," he smiled, "capable of reaching far-off continents and non-disturbing for transmissions like radio, TV and radar; otherwise they would have been discovered long ago. I discussed the matter with Voss and, being a genius, he constructed a device capable of recording and playing back such hypothetical waves. I visited zoos innumerable to record waves emitted by one species and playing them while I walked about looking for a change of behavior in other species. Animals on my postcards are the emitters and the receivers, the former enabling the latter to live. I discovered such pairs in every zoo and was soon running out of rare species. Zoos repeat themselves: there is always a complete set of PR-beasts like the elephant, the hippo, the bear or the chimp. I was forced to do much of my research in Nature, bitten and sucked by mosquitoes, freezing, thirsting, drenched to the skin or hanging off a mountain!” He looked me in the eyes.
I’ve been living a quiet life while he’s been taking mortal risks – and he exposed me to only a minor one.
“You are pardoned,” I said and he poured me a large malt from his very private and expensive hoard.
I drank up with gusto. He poured another for us both and went on:
“There is a difference between the waves emitted by animals and those played by the machine. The first are long-range and sustain normal level of activity in the receiver-species, the second are short-range and cause hyperactivity, easy to detect. In this simple manner I was able to discern what species guarantees life to which, this in turn assuring life to yet another. It must have been like that all through the Evolution: some species simply couldn't pop up until an entirely different species evolved into a new species and produced a new pattern of waves enabling it to appear, perhaps on another continent."
During his absence, Vogel kept sending me two postcards apiece from zoos the world over. The first would say: Greetings from [so and so zoo], making progress. The second: Ditto. Each was a photo of an animal, bought in the "zoovenir" shop, but the animals were oddly paired. From the Beijing Zoo he sent a panda on the first card and some kind of pig on the other, from the Nairobi Zoo – an aardvark and a penguin.
I received over a hundred of such pairs. Obviously, they were meant as clues to Vogel’s work. I could see no logic in the choice of the species, though, and did not care much, having sufficiently to do with my own projects. I contented myself with tracking his chaotic movements on a globe.
Finally, eight months after he left, he phoned from Brazil about workers to arrive at my end the next day. They did, built a hothouse and instructed me how to operate the heating system: it was winter outside and the temperature inside was to be kept at 30°C (100°F). Florists' vans brought tropical plants. They were put inside the glasshouse and I was instructed how to care for them. A landscaper arrived with rocks and soil and used the plants to create a mini-jungle. Vogel arrived and a cage was brought in the greenhouse and he took me inside: hummingbirds were hovering and sucking nourishment at feeding stations. They were beautiful: green bodies with red wings and yellow heads, all with metallic-like shine.
"It's a shame to jail them,” I said enchanted with their humming and breathtaking beauty.
"I don't want to jail them, I have to."
He instructed me how to prepare their liquid food and went to sleep off his jetlag.
Next morning I awoke with a shout, sprang out of bed and felt so much energy, so much life in me that I had to do something extreme – or I would burst! In my pajamas, I jumped through the window shattering the pane and landing in a snow-drive outside. I got up and, howling like a wolf, I ran into the woods. I ran and ran in deep snow – there was no limit to my energy; I felt I could accomplish any physical feat. I scared some deer, caught up with them, overtook them and turning my head back I stuck my tongue out to them! Flabbergasted, the kindly animals stopped in their tracks and so did I – because I collided with a tree.
Concussed and laying in the snow I saw before me a mini player: open, the cassette beside. There was adhesive tape with strands of my hair glued to the contrivance. Clearly, the tape had been used to fasten it to my head while I was asleep. The player must have caused my hyperactive behavior. Now the device was torn off by the impact and nonfunctional. I felt boundlessly nonfunctional, too – and went out.
Picture by Alicja Fenigsen, see my links
As I regained consciousness, I was lying on our toboggan, wrapped in blankets and tugged by our snowmobile. Vogel must have tracked me. I was aching all over but not enough to keep me awake.
When I awoke I was in my own bed and it was noon of the next day. There was plastic sheeting on the damaged window: it had happened, then. In my head, I reviewed the “reel” of the events of the day before and I understood: it was Vogel who had affixed the player in order to make me an unwitting part – a guinea pig, a lab-rat – to a dangerous experiment. I could have been killed! Damn him!
I felt an urge to punch him, but I only stood up with effort, every fiber in my body aching as after an enormous physical exertion. No punching was possible. Slowly, I put on my dressing gown and wobbled to the sitting-room; I could hear him there busying himself with crockery and cutlery.
Words like "two-faced bastard" were on my lips, as I hobbled in, but seeing guilt on his face and my favorite foods on the table I ended up calling him a "serious asshole".
"That I am," he said, "but you are in need of serious nourishment."
That I was. The gourmet food Vogel is so good at was delicious. When we finished I was sufficiently restored to content myself with a demand for an explanation.
“Recall the dead rodents and bats?” he obliged. “My first thought was that the rodents kept the bats alive by their sheer existence: when they died, the bats died. But how exactly do they do that?"
"Sending postcards, one species to another?"
"Bio-waves," he smiled, "capable of reaching far-off continents and non-disturbing for transmissions like radio, TV and radar; otherwise they would have been discovered long ago. I discussed the matter with Voss and, being a genius, he constructed a device capable of recording and playing back such hypothetical waves. I visited zoos innumerable to record waves emitted by one species and playing them while I walked about looking for a change of behavior in other species. Animals on my postcards are the emitters and the receivers, the former enabling the latter to live. I discovered such pairs in every zoo and was soon running out of rare species. Zoos repeat themselves: there is always a complete set of PR-beasts like the elephant, the hippo, the bear or the chimp. I was forced to do much of my research in Nature, bitten and sucked by mosquitoes, freezing, thirsting, drenched to the skin or hanging off a mountain!” He looked me in the eyes.
I’ve been living a quiet life while he’s been taking mortal risks – and he exposed me to only a minor one.
“You are pardoned,” I said and he poured me a large malt from his very private and expensive hoard.
I drank up with gusto. He poured another for us both and went on:
“There is a difference between the waves emitted by animals and those played by the machine. The first are long-range and sustain normal level of activity in the receiver-species, the second are short-range and cause hyperactivity, easy to detect. In this simple manner I was able to discern what species guarantees life to which, this in turn assuring life to yet another. It must have been like that all through the Evolution: some species simply couldn't pop up until an entirely different species evolved into a new species and produced a new pattern of waves enabling it to appear, perhaps on another continent."
He raised his glass: "I drink to the Zoosequence, my newly discovered Law of Nature!"
I drank up but stayed skeptical: "A sequence of millions of species: one at the bottom, guaranteeing life to the next and so on, all the way to the top: one long chain. If you destroy the species at the root, you’ve killed them all. If you exterminate a species in the upper parts of the chain, you take life of all those above. And were it a ring, animal life would be dead long ago, with dinosaurs, mammoths, dodos gone and now a species or two exterminated each and every day..."
"Not a ring – a tree, observably! The Tree of Life! There is the Trunk, a short affair consisting of some 10 000 species and having the qualities you mentioned, and there are Branches, as most of those in the Trunk assure existence of more than one species. These secure life for short side sequences of species, as was the case with the rodents guaranteeing the bats guaranteeing, say, a species of beetles in French Guyana, which nobody is missing, as it has not been discovered yet? And this Branch ends there. So far, we have been lucky that all of the lost species were in the Branches, not in the Trunk. Thanks to your participation, my guess has been validated: it is the hummingbirds who are our emitters. Sorry I used you, but I was afraid to awake the Hulk in some strangers.”
He poured another for us and suddenly I understood:
"More afraid of what kind of a Hulk would be aroused in yourself – as you would have to be close at hand. This is why you used me!" I said accusingly.
"Guilty as charged but, as I was the one with the knowledge, I had to remain outside. The attachable very short-range player was made by Voss on my request. I phoned him from Brazil."
Suddenly, I am aware that my employer is looking at me in a queer way, so I asked for a mirror. As I was viewing the maltreated face of but a casual resemblance to me, Vogel sighed and gave me a sizable raise.
“Now that we have their emissions recorded,” I said feeling elated by this token of appreciation, “we don’t need the birds. It’s only a technical problem to get the right quality of the waves and then we could use the satellite net to beam them to all over the world and even take them on Mars…”
“I like your modern global approach but I still prefer the genuine article.”
“You had the recording, so you didn’t need to bring the hummingbirds to have your experiment. Why all these costs to make an artificial jungle? Weren’t they happy in their natural environment?”
"Brazilians are about to make timber out of their habitat in the Amazonas," he replied. “And what if the technicians can’t get the waves right? Can mankind survive if we all become Tarzans, like you had?”
I pondered these – and other – questions for some time.
"And what’s the species at the root of the Trunk, ensuring all animal and human life?" I asked finally.
"I haven't found out yet."
"But, at any rate, we are at the top of the Trunk, aren't we?"
"Human vanity! We are high up the Trunk, I’ll give you that. We occupy the level just before the very top, and the top is split into two Branches. Thus, we have the honor and the privilege of guaranteeing the existence of the two topmost species in Nature."
"Which are …?" I held my breath.
"The house-fly (Musca domestica) and the skunk (Mephitis mephitis)." Vogel raised his glass: "To Mankind: let’s keep on accomplishing that historic mission of ours!"
I drank up but stayed skeptical: "A sequence of millions of species: one at the bottom, guaranteeing life to the next and so on, all the way to the top: one long chain. If you destroy the species at the root, you’ve killed them all. If you exterminate a species in the upper parts of the chain, you take life of all those above. And were it a ring, animal life would be dead long ago, with dinosaurs, mammoths, dodos gone and now a species or two exterminated each and every day..."
"Not a ring – a tree, observably! The Tree of Life! There is the Trunk, a short affair consisting of some 10 000 species and having the qualities you mentioned, and there are Branches, as most of those in the Trunk assure existence of more than one species. These secure life for short side sequences of species, as was the case with the rodents guaranteeing the bats guaranteeing, say, a species of beetles in French Guyana, which nobody is missing, as it has not been discovered yet? And this Branch ends there. So far, we have been lucky that all of the lost species were in the Branches, not in the Trunk. Thanks to your participation, my guess has been validated: it is the hummingbirds who are our emitters. Sorry I used you, but I was afraid to awake the Hulk in some strangers.”
He poured another for us and suddenly I understood:
"More afraid of what kind of a Hulk would be aroused in yourself – as you would have to be close at hand. This is why you used me!" I said accusingly.
"Guilty as charged but, as I was the one with the knowledge, I had to remain outside. The attachable very short-range player was made by Voss on my request. I phoned him from Brazil."
Suddenly, I am aware that my employer is looking at me in a queer way, so I asked for a mirror. As I was viewing the maltreated face of but a casual resemblance to me, Vogel sighed and gave me a sizable raise.
“Now that we have their emissions recorded,” I said feeling elated by this token of appreciation, “we don’t need the birds. It’s only a technical problem to get the right quality of the waves and then we could use the satellite net to beam them to all over the world and even take them on Mars…”
“I like your modern global approach but I still prefer the genuine article.”
“You had the recording, so you didn’t need to bring the hummingbirds to have your experiment. Why all these costs to make an artificial jungle? Weren’t they happy in their natural environment?”
"Brazilians are about to make timber out of their habitat in the Amazonas," he replied. “And what if the technicians can’t get the waves right? Can mankind survive if we all become Tarzans, like you had?”
I pondered these – and other – questions for some time.
"And what’s the species at the root of the Trunk, ensuring all animal and human life?" I asked finally.
"I haven't found out yet."
"But, at any rate, we are at the top of the Trunk, aren't we?"
"Human vanity! We are high up the Trunk, I’ll give you that. We occupy the level just before the very top, and the top is split into two Branches. Thus, we have the honor and the privilege of guaranteeing the existence of the two topmost species in Nature."
"Which are …?" I held my breath.
"The house-fly (Musca domestica) and the skunk (Mephitis mephitis)." Vogel raised his glass: "To Mankind: let’s keep on accomplishing that historic mission of ours!"
Copyright Peter Billig 2007
Picture by Alicja Fenigsen, see my links
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