The Purple Wyrm

As much as we can wax poetic about the Earth being a living organism and Gaia and all that jazz, the truth is a little different. See, the Earth is an egg. All this stuff growing on it is like moss, and bacteria. Bacteria that’s learn to build and destroy stuff. But it… we… can’t destroy the egg itself. That’s up to the Cosmos and the Grand Omniscient Dude floating somewhere out there in the soup of stars and vacuums.

This photo was sent to me by my oceanographer pal (who choose to remain nameless, since he fears being called a raving lunatic). He was floating in the Pacific Ocean somewhere (he won’t tell me exactly where… something about the increase in boat traffic upsetting the migration of the Boring’s Grouper.) and spotted this THING in the water.

The Earth, remember, is an egg. This THING appears to be… well… a giant sperm. Not a sperm whale, you know. Nothing as simple as that. Something is trying to fertilize the planet.

I asked my pal why he didn’t try to kill this thing when he saw it. He grumbled and called me a few choice names, but, once he realized I was asking out of academic interest only, he replied.

“Imagine what it will hatch into, Louie!”

I pointed out that we’d probably all die if the Earth cracked open and something big and slimy popped out of it, but he didn’t seem to care. If there are sperm that size gliding around in our oceans, looking for an opening into the core, worrying about what the Earth might hatch out is just stupid.

My weekends at the Jersey shore are out though, I can tell you that.
I’m a dragon, for fuck’s sake. I’m not going out by being eaten be a giant sperm.

From time to time people contact me to tell me they saw something unusual. (If you’ve seen anything unusual, feel free to do the same.)

I just got a reported recently from a lady named Mary Lou in Illinois. She swore she saw fairies danced in her backyard garden and, when she went to investigate closer she found what she thought were tiny footprints and some very odd marks on her cabbage leaves.

Now, even though I know fairies exist, they’re not the first thing I think of when I hear about marks on cabbage leaves. To tell you the truth, caterpillars are much more likely. Fairies tend to keep hidden and when they get gas — Phew! — those little things practically explode.

So. As this lady Marilou why she thinks it’s fairies. I wrote down our conversation verbatim for you all to enjoy.

Louie: Hey, Mary Lou. Now, why is it that you think there are fairies in your Cabbage Patch?

Mary Lou: well you see Louie, I went out in the morning with Tipsy, my Pomeranian, so she could do her business in the yard. And when I was walking past the vegetable patch I noticed something funny around the cabbages. There were holes on the leaves but they weren’t like holes bugs would make. They weren’t all raggedy, you know.

Louie: so what was it with these holes? And did you see anything else?

Mary Lou: the holes were in shapes. Like hearts and diamonds and flowers… just cut out of the leaves. I guess some kid might have done it but I can’t see why. I thought perhaps the fairies were making some kind of special salad, or maybe use and the shapes for something fancy like decorations. Oh, and I also saw the tiny footprints. They were like little half inch long feet in the ground. I could even see the toes on some.

Louie: it sounds like fairies alright. Here’s what I suggest you do. Go to the store — like Wal-Mart or a hardware store — and by yourself five or six cans of industrial strength Raid. Then you wait till nightfall and sneak out into backyard near the cabbages. But those damned fairies have the with both barrels. And don’t eat the cabbages when you’re done.

You’d think I would’ve asked the woman to set fire to her yard the way she went on. Some people just don’t know about fairies.