Letters from America by Peary Perry

I think I’ve heard it said that some things are better left alone.

Here’s the deal, up in Kansas at something called the Kansas Underground Salt Museum they’ve discovered an organism about 250 million years old. And that’s not all; they’ve succeeded in getting it to reawaken. As in bringing it back to life. You got it; they have located some species of bacteria that has been locked inside of a Kansas salt cavern for those 250 million years. Better still, they think they might have found some other strains of the stuff that could be 275 million years old. They said all of the bacteria that has been found is older than the dinosaurs.

Let’s think about this for a moment.

The dinosaurs and a lot of other species died off sometime long ago, right? I mean we don’t see a lot of prehistoric animals or reptiles running around the planet except in the movies. So what killed them off? Who knows? There are all kinds of theories, such as some giant asteroid or comet having hit the earth and blocking out the sun for a thousand years and so on. We certainly don’t have any written records left over from that time frame to research and talk about, do we? I mean Uglue the European Neanderthal didn’t look around one day and notice that a lot of the animals had just disappeared and then went back to his cave and jotted down a few notes expressing his concern and thoughts on this subject.

Nope, Uglue was probably out chasing some dinner for the little woman who needed some more skins to cover the holes in their new dwelling. She also needed more meat since her brothers and their wives had just moved in with them. She also wanted Uglue to start bringing in more firewood each day since her mother was coming to live with them as well and she needed the fire going due to her arthritis. Of course Uglue didn’t know to call his mother in laws condition arthritis.... he just called it ... the old woman’s condition. Actually he didn’t even say this out loud since his wife or mother in law had a tendency to hit him rather sharply over the head with a large femur left over from a previous feast. Our man Uglue spent his days out in the forests and woods trying to stay alive. He had no money, no currency of any kind and no government, which in hindsight was a blessing he wasn’t even aware of. Their voting process was fairly simple; the guy with the biggest stick usually was the leader. How would they know? What would they do if it escaped and got into the air and started killing off everyone? I’m all for science, but I’ve always been afraid of rockets from the moon and Mars bringing back strange stuff that could kill us all. It could happen, couldn’t it? I suppose if a large number of people up in Kansas start dying off, then we should start to be concerned. I’ll try to keep tabs on that in the coming weeks. Let me know if you hear anything. Uglue is looking forward to the day when beer gets invented.

Comments go to pperry@austin.rr.com .