Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban

Author:Russell Hoban [Hoban, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: U.S.A., 21st Century, Amazon.com, Retail, 20th Century, literature, britain, American Literature, Expatriate Literature, British History
ISBN: 9781590176467
Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
Published: 1975-01-01T15:00:00+00:00

24

Neaera H.

In this morning’s Times I read that the astronauts on Skylab-2 have got two spiders with them. One of the spiders, named Arabella, has spun something like a normal web. ‘Weightlessness disorientated her at the start,’ says the news item from Houston, ‘and her first attempts produced only a few wisps, mainly in the corners of her cage. But today, on the thirteenth day of the Skylab-2 flight, Dr Owen Garriott was quite pleased with the work done by the spider. “This time the web is essentially, at first glance, like one you would find on the ground,” Dr Garriott said.’

That Arabella should have spun any sort of web, should have made the effort at all, overwhelms me. In her place I should have sulked or been sick I am sure. She didn’t even know which way was up let alone where she was or why and yet she spun a reasonably workable web out there in space. I hope they had the decency to bring some flies for her to catch, I can’t think they’d make her eat tiny frozen dinners squeezed out of tubes or whatever astronauts subsist on. And if they did bring flies those flies must appear somewhere on Skylab-2’s manifest: Flies, 12 doz. If there are flies up there no mention is made of them or how they adapted to weightlessness. Perhaps they’d use dead flies just as they use dead mice to feed the owls at the Zoo. In any case Arabella deserves a plaque on Skylab-2. But of course she doesn’t need one, hasn’t got the sort of mind that thinks about plaques. She needs no recognition, can recognize herself and spin a web wherever she may be. What good things instincts are!

Last night I had a dream thought that I held on to carefully until this morning. It was: Those who know it have forgotten every part of it, those who don’t know it remember it completely. Aggravating. Those who know or don’t know what? I haven’t a clue and what’s most annoying is that something in me knows what was meant.

There was a week of nature films on the South Bank and I went to see one about sharks. The film was made by a man of apparently unlimited wealth who fitted himself out with a large ship and any amount of special underwater gear for shark photography. He and his companions all agreed that diving among sharks was for them the ultimate challenge. They were particularly keen to encounter a great white shark, a rare species and the one most feared as a man-eater. They went from ocean to ocean looking for the great white shark and I couldn’t help wondering all the time how much it was costing. I think the money spent on even one of the special diving cages would keep me in high style for half a year at least.

For a large part of the time they followed whaling ships, photographing sharks feeding on whale carcasses.

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