Thesaurasaurus

Thursday, February 05, 2009

The Pygmy Tarsier


Today I happened upon a short news story about this critter, believed to be extinct since the 1920s, recently found on top of a mountain covered in mist in Indonesia. Apparently scientists were setting rodent traps hoping to catch rats, and ended up catching one of these muppets. Since then they've changed their status from 'extinct' to just 'very very shy' or something of the like.

I guess in a way it just goes to show that, even though sometimes the options are few and circumstances are sort of lame or depressing, one never knows what's out there. Not that the world is overrun suddenly with tiny homely tarsiers that look like rejects from a Jim Henson audition, far from it, they're still very rare. But for a long time science and everything rational closed the book on them, and turns out they were still just up their tree, assassinating insects and looking down at the world through giant creepy eyes the whole time. Huh.

I take this as a sort of reminder these days that there are good options about right now, even though pretty much all of the world's economies are tanking and at times Chicago is like living in a frozen pit of despair (it is winter, after all -- what did we honestly expect?) and people are out of work and businesses are going under and lots of people are desperately unhappy. All of these things are true. But you never know what's out there. I'm not necessarily an optimist (I think of myself as more of a hopeful realist) but it's neat to think about something good existing in the world that we can't see yet. I like to believe that we live in a world full of things we can't see but need to survive. Like oxygen molecules or irony or the way we unconsciously grin when we remember a great conversation we had late last night when we should have been sleeping. Even when we've given up on something, that doesn't mean it stops existing. Science teaches us that nothing really ever goes away -- things change form and become unrecognizable at times, but they're still around in some form to keep the natural universe on an even keel.

Hence the Pygmy Tarsier. There it is.

2 Comments:

Blogger Keely said...

ow. my heart. i LOVE big eyes.

also, nice use of the phrase "on an even keel."

also also, you're like the pygmy tarsier. adorable and very, very present.

also thrice, we're hanging out tonight.

(agatal!)

1:08 PM  
Blogger Keely said...

ow. my heart. i LOVE big eyes.

also, nice use of the phrase "on an even keel."

also also, you're like the pygmy tarsier. adorable and very, very present.

also thrice, we're hanging out tonight.

(agatal!)

1:08 PM  

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