August 20, 2007

Regarding Moth Pixies and Browncaps

by Jeremiah Tolbert

The above photonic capture included the following from the notes of Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom, a naturalist at large in City Park:

I returned to the small forrest of brown caps after a week of working within my laboratory to discover that a family of moth pixies had made homes of the mushrooms--or at least, had tasked some other tiny beast to make homes out of it for them. Moth pixies, according to my field guides, are noxious pests that delight in uprooting gardens and spreading aphids (which they eat, but apparently in not very large quantities). The addition of chimneys to their homes was a proper shock--it is not in the published literature that moth pixies can wield fire! The discovery immediately set my mind racing.

I collected one of the browncap homes for dissection, much to their consernation, and I received a tiny bite for my trouble. The bite is healing very badly, despite being doused in poultices of my own creation. I'm not sure it was worth my trouble. The chimneys serve no function and are not connected to the inner dwelling. They are decorative in nature only. My theory is that they construct them in a mimicry of the rows of brownstones that line the streets just outside the Park. Despite folklore, this variety at least are far from intelligent creatures, I believe. Their intelligence seems more akin to that of a parrot, if parrots were so gleefully malicious.

There are such wonderful discoveries here. My heart runs wild imaging what more lies in wait for me out there in the brambles.