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43. ALL RISE IN DUNG (Dec. 2003)

          What's just another dumb turd to you and I, humans with all the pathetic limitations of our species, is a meal beyond measure to the dung beetle, gourmet of gross, a hunter of the foul, the absolute lord of what's left. Our world would be immensely tainted without them, for they are the Earth's natural sanitation engineers, cleaning up after elephants and cattle, leaving our woods and pastures and savannas neat and tidy after Jumbo or Bambi make a mess, chomping it up as if a 5-star chef 's masterpiece, maybe burying it and bringing beneficial nitrogen to the hungry soil and grateful plants. Let an elephant drop a single patty on the Serengeti and as many as 16,000 beetles can appear as if falling out of air. Some beetles cling to the butts of kangaroos waiting for the next glorious moment, and when the thing comes and snaps off the beetle LEAPS from the warm bum into the air like a trapeze artist and joins the item in its descent to earth. Those beetles who wait for the wonderful defecations of monkeys may fly 100 feet down from the treetops wiith their treasures. See how they fight amongst themselves for their magic doodoo, some running off with their prize, some burying it on the spot, some even entering it, to live and be happy and eat it from within. No squeamishness, no euphemisms, no excess of sensitivity, just a joyous coprophilic celebration of life, as it is lowered by God or Nature. The life force boils and seethes in them, and males and females meet amidst the poop and find each other, Mr. Right and Ms. Right. Some males will woo their ladies by picking up a bit and shaking it in her face, and that is how she knows he is successful and strong and alpha and Type A and worthy of her genes. Try this in a bar some night. See me, ye easy atheists, the beetles sing, ye jaded, ye sleepy of life, for I sing, not of gold or shining diamonds, I sing of shit, and the Pharaohs worshipped me with reason.
 

 

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