Woodlice

Don’t ask me why I have decided to write about creatures, I couldn’t tell you. I just found them there in my words and a hamster, a beaver and a snake ganged up on me and made me do it.

Creatures. Crawling walking swimming flying climbing sliding jumping wriggling burrowing biting stinging swinging hungry howling screeching caterwauling cousin critters.

Jesus there are so many of them. God the endless variations.

Do we really need so many? I seriously doubt it. Nothing the next mass extinction won’t sort out.

Woodlice. I was fascinated by them. Little tanks that roll themselves up into an armoured ball, they are part of the forest floor, expert bin men. Few other creatures will eat something so completely indigestible.

You can find a hell of a lot of them under a damp piece of wood. They don’t move very fast, more of a multi-legged trundle, but then neither do they have many accidents. They hang around in bars, drinking average-strength beer in moderate amounts, teaching the waitress slang she doesn’t need or care about or understand. They always come home but they might take a wrong turning heading back with the shopping sometimes.

Woodlice: 5/10 for elegance, 7/10 for curling up into a ball, 9/10 for ubiquity.