I get home last night to the sound of a typical documentary voice. You know the type, a bit of an accent from somewhere or the other (I’m assuming it’s fake or put on), usually a male’s voice who, in the back of his mind I’m sure knows that everyone listening to him wants to reach for a shotgun in order to create a master piece of blood and gore on the strategically placed wall facing the TV set. I momentarily block out his voice and am drawn to the scene captured by a camera that seems to be traveling up the trunk of an endlessly long tree. It was kind of like that cartoon based on jack and the bean stock, where jack climbs the gigantic bean stock past the clouds and all sorts of levels of heaven before getting to the giants house.
“Oh wow! How tall is THAT tree?! Ha! That S%*t is whack!” Mind you I’m alone in the room at this point and so random thoughts and questions thrown at inanimate objects make perfect sense. And in response I hear a voice that goes. “Isn’t that crazy? It grows up to 8 meters a year and they say it lives for ages too.” I don’t give a second’s thought as to how or why I got an answer when I spoke to the TV but instead ponder the possibilities of a fridge that comes in the same make and model.
“Where’s the mayo?”
“second row on the left.”
I laugh to myself as the thought “puts a whole new spin on the words full options...doesn’t it?” lit in neon lights dance around in my head. Snapping out of the oblivion that is my mind, I am fixated on the beauty of it all. More and more drawn to the images of the rainforest and the fact that these trees, these gorgeous endless miles of green, are what both consume gallons upon gallons of water but also create it as well. I allow the voice of the presenter to infiltrate my ears and he is no longer white noise.
“The rain forests receive up to 2 meters of rainfall a year, and the trees create half that amount”
It was after I’d developed this bond with fake accent presenter man and the incredibly well shot documentary that I learnt lots and lots. I find it’s not so much what I see or hear that shows me the world from a different perspective but it’s my taking it all in and reflecting on it in comparison to the world around me.
There was this one scene of a pack of chimpanzees that reminded me of human atrocities committed in times of war. Moving in perfect alignment through the foliage enroute to the scene of an ambush where another pack of unaware chimpanzees were going about their business eating their fruits. They stopped and listened all at the same time. One chimpanzee traveled up ahead to check out what was going on and with a nod of his/her head signaled to the rest of the pack that it they needed to move forward. Their strategy was to create as much noise and commotion as possible when they attacked. Screaming and banging on the trunks of trees they seemed like a cocky crazed enemy invading a country with way less men than could possibly over through the current rule. Rape and pillage were the only way to describe it. A female chimpanzee was lucky to have escaped with her life only after being rapped. Another young chimpanzee was killed and most disturbing of all eaten just to set an example I’m guessing. When you see these things in a rainforest you can’t help but think it justifiable because they are animals but the comparison and similarity of which they reminded me of people was most unsettling.
With a moment of silence and a musical interlude fake accent presenter dude’s attention shifts to the coolest fungus out there! Mr wilson’s cabinate of wonders describes it like this:
“Large ants survive by foraging for food among the fallen leaves and undergrowth
of the extraordinarily rich rain-forest floor.
On occasion, while foraging for food ants will become infected by inhaling the microscopic spore of a fungus from the genus Tomentella, millions of which rain down upon the forest floor from somewhere in the canopy above. Upon being inhaled, the spore lodges itself
inside the ant’s tiny brain and immediately begins to grow, quickly fomenting bizarre behavioral changes in its ant host. The creature appears troubled and confused, and presently, for the first time in its life, it leaves the forest floor and begins an arduous climb up the stalks of vines and ferns.
Driven on and on by the still-growing fungus, the ant finally achieves a seemingly prescribed height whereupon, utterly spent, it impales the plant with its mandibles and, thus affixed, waits to die. Ants that have met their doom in this fashion are quite a common sight in certain sections of the rain forest.
The fungus, for its part, lives on. It continues to consume the brain, moving on
through the rest of the nervous system and, eventually, through all the soft tissue that remains of the ant. After approximately two weeks, a spike like protrusion erupts from out of what had once been the ant’s head. Growing to a length of about an inch and a half, the spike features a bright orange tip, heavy-laden with spores, which now begin to rain down onto the forest floor for other unsuspecting ants to inhale.”
Its crazy… totally totally crazy. So out of a scifi movie check it out.
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