THE EXTRAORDINARY FECUNDITY of LIFE

text by Helen Phillips

illustration by Adam Thompson

99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.                       

 

                   --Bill Bryson

 

 

No one would suspect me as a Disturber of the Peace. I am quiet, and small for a man! I have twenty-four jars of colored inklined up on my stained desk. I have spent most of my life in a windowless room where they store bottles of pickled animals, cardboard pinned with insects, and drawers of bones.

 

Isobela's Wolversheen: Most similar to the present-day wolverine. Dull matted coat glowed in starlight. Enormous red eyes. Long sharp teeth. Gentle disposition.

 

Yet they are coming for me. I can hear them rattling locks five stories down. My only mistake was to toss the mimeographs out the window of the tower, letting them fall down into the city. I could not resist notifying the world about a few creatures, dispatching hints of my labor as I went along. I watched them land in the streets and the parks, on rooftops and the river! I watched children and old people pick them up! I saw how differently they walked after they had absorbed the contents!

 

Now they've broken through and are battling the fifteenth door.

 

Isobela's Giant Spindlyfly: Most similar to the present-day dragonfly. Grew to the size of an eagle. Flew up to 80 miles per hour. Translucent wings resembled opals.

 

The wings of a spindlyfly can be represented by lightly layering blue ink on top of and beneath orange ink. This is the kind of thing I've learned.

 

Our planet has spawned more than thirty billion species. Of those, only a quarter of a million are memorialized in the fossil record. It is not easy to accept this dearth of knowledge!

 

Isobela's Ancient Woodyworm: Most similar to the present-day millipede. Ten thousand legs. Seven feet long. Traveled in packs.

 

Nothing green left in its wake.

 

I have depicted each of those legs in brown ink.

 

They've argued whether two species go extinct every week, or ten, or six hundred, or a thousand. I have no opinion. All I know is that my work is infinite, and becoming more infinite with each second. There is so much to imagine, and to record!

 

The thirteenth door glides open easily. I don't hear the familiar creak echoing up through the floors. They are tricky, and must have oiled the hinges.

 

Isobela's Uneven-Eyed Boarhog: Most similar to the present-day pig. Three eyes. Snout with fangs at the end. Ate small mammals, including human children.

 

I did not have to make anything up to cast the children and old people into a state of awe. There is fossil proof to support the existence of a ten-ton sea cow. There is evidence that turtles were once the most sophisticated and lethal species on the planet. There used to be crocodiles three times the size of those in our zoos. The list of what we know has gone extinct reads like an exquisite nightmare.

 

Isobela's Mamalonglegs: Most similar to the present-day spider. Resembled a pineapple slice in size and shape. No venom. Swung between trees on abdominal thread.

 

But for each creature a geologist might observe in the fossil record, there are more than a hundred thousand for which no evidence at all remains! When I learned this five decades ago at the university, I wept.

 

The broken doorknob of the eleventh door clangs on the floor of Mammalogy.

 

Isobela's Sweetrat: Most similar to the present-day squirrel. Smaller than a thumb. Used assembly-line passing method to deliver berries from bush to babies in nest.

 

Not what has been lost; but rather what may have been lost. This is the story I wish to tell. There is always the possibility--thirty billion species!--that I am not incorrect in my fantasies.

 

They seem to be lost in Botany. Hopefully the lichens are safe. I can hear them shouting to one another down there, searching for the tenth door.

 

Isobela's Ponyphlant: Most similar to the present-day elephant. No larger than a pony. Matriarchal social structure. Strangled predators with trunk when necessary.

 

You--who walk by the river and pick up fallen leaves to examine the peculiar pattern of warty white mold growing on them, who look kindly on skinny boys and rickety men, who entertain the possibility of dragons--will understand.

 

Isobela's Perladillo: Most similar to the present-day armadillo. The size of a sailboat. Tusks with seven curls. Armor-like bony plates resembled mother-of-pearl.

 

I have worked twelve hours a day, 365 days a year (every four years 366 days), for 47 years. I am no closer to thirty billion, not really. But 17,142 species--imagined, identified, and catalogued--is far better than none! I know you'll agree.

 

They're making their noisy way through Ornithology. I fear for the ostrich eggs. Soon they'll come upon what looks like the eighth door, but when they open it they'll see it's been bricked over. Nevertheless, it won't take them long to find the real thing.

 

Isobela's Ogre Coon: Most similar to the present-day raccoon. Size and ruthlessness of a polar bear. Inhabited South American jungles. Ate quetzal eggs.

 

How often I have thought of your doorstep. The worn bricks. Herbs growing on the fire escape. Lavender! Mint! Cilantro! Parsley! A screen door. Beyond that, a green door, peeling paint. Beyond that, a kitchen. A jar of milk. November light on wood floors and rugs made from rags. Dust. The smell of warm milk. A list of 20,000 creatures, wrapped in brown paper.

 

Isobela's Bufbuf: Most similar to the present-day ostrich. Fifteen feet tall. Weighed up to 600 pounds. Short useless wings. Ripped lions' heads off with its beak.

 

They're getting closer. The old lift groans with the weight of them. I know what they'll say when they arrive! That I have spread false information--offensive, corruptive, seductive, deceptive, disturbing information--to children and old people through my mimeographs. That this is supposed to be the museum for the new millennium, the Museum of the Truth. That here, in this world, in this city, we are interested in real life.

 

Isobela's Cave-Ghost Slug: Most similar to the present-day garden slug. Blind and colorless. Inhabited unknown caves deep within the planet. Fed on stalactites.

 

Because the slug is colorless, it cannot be represented with my ink. This entry is accompanied by a bit of blank space where the picture should go. You'll have to imagine it for yourself.

 

There they go, crashing through Mineralogy, a geode cracking.

 

Isobela's Feral Pink Hopping-Cat: Most similar to the present-day housecat. Capable of jumping fifty yards at a time. Nested in swamps. Tended to eat its own young.

 

Don't worry. I'll defend myself. When they say, 'It smells like death in here, like sulfur and stagnation, dust and decay, rot and the perfume of the Queen,' I will say, 'Yes, yes, but also it smells like life! Can't you smell my hair growing? My toenails growing? My eyes

watering?'

 

Now they're banging around down there in front of the fourth door. The stampede pauses while one of them shatters the lock with the barrel of a gun. Brittle bird bones snap in the drawers.

 

Isobela's Jewel-Box Parrot: Most similar to the present-day parakeet. Bronze plumage. Golden beak and feet. Sensitive temperament. Mourned lost mate for years.

 

I will say, 'It began as a project to record all the creatures we know of that have gone extinct. But what a small percentage of life that is! What about all the creatures we don't know of that have gone extinct? A much more rigorous line of inquiry, don't you see? If I've been forced to resort to documenting unreal animals, you must forgive me. It is not easy to do what I'm doing. Tell me, have any of you ever sleepwalked in a swamp at night while the centuries raced by around you?'

 

Isobela's Princess-Snatcher: Most similar to the present-day gecko. Thirty feet long. Lethargic. Camouflage scales. Often mistaken for the mythological dragon.

 

But they are museum guards, policemen, politicians, housewives, bankers. They have no interest whatsoever in swamps or centuries or sleepwalking! They are not curious about the inner rooms of the Museum, or a man who toils with inks of many colors.

 

Now they've found the winding staircase.

 

Isobela's White-Faced Lazyboy: Most similar to the present-day ground sloth. Twenty feet tall. Sharp claws to peel thorns off roses, its primary source of sustenance.

 

They believe anything that needs to be found in this world can be located by turning over each and every rock, sieving each and every cubic inch of dirt, penetrating each and every depth of the seas. They will not recognize me as someone who has overturned and sieved and penetrated, who has unburied and unveiled, who has discovered entire food chains!

 

Isobela's Arctic Cygnet: Most similar to the present-day swan. Wingspan twelve feet. Neck like a giraffe's. Pale blue eggs the size of human heads, tended by males.

 

They are not the sort to seriously consider such creatures as the Arctic Cygnet or the White-Faced Lazyboy, or to mourn the fact that the species currently inhabiting our planet are more docile and less whimsical than the animals from any earlier eon.

 

And here they are.

 

Isobela's Orange Duchessbug: Most similar to the present-day ladybug. The size of a woman's hand. Orange with yellow dots. Poisonous. Violent when attacked.

 

If things had gone according to plan, I would have come to you when I was an extremely old man and you were an extremely old woman. The brown paper package would have weighed fifty pounds or more by then. I would have held it for you while you turned the pages one by one. You'd have seen more than life as we know it. You'd have seen the gigantic, the miniscule, the exquisite, the savage!

 

Isobela's Porcuspruce: Most similar to the present-day porcupine. Its four stilt-like legs elevated it 60 inches off the ground, enabling it to eat the tops of spruce trees.

 

However, this could only have happened in a more perfect world, a world where species don't disappear by the millions, a world where there isn't a crowd of angry citizens at the door, shooting through the lock with their guns.

 

Isobela's Ever-Lasting Pup: Most similar to the present-day Yorkshire terrier. A dog-like creature that never grew larger than a mouse. Blind, deaf, dumb, amorous.

 

I am prepared. I have my barricade. Twenty-four jars of colored ink. Many bottles of pickled animals. Many sheets of cardboard pinned with insects. Many drawers of bones. Thousands of pages of tight cursive and precise illustrations.

 

Come, then! Enter!

 

But nothing. A weak and gentle tapping at my door. A thin voice wondering if I'm hungry, or wish for a glass of water.