LIFE OF AN AMOEBA

By Mystic Madam Misty Merky Merkel

Assistant Associate Contributor

Humor News Nuts Online Publications

Well, I ended up in the weirdest place.  It seems that after trying to determine who would be the next president of the United States I ended up lying on my back on top of my trailer with a chipmunk sitting on my face and looking me in the eye.  Unfortunately, when I stood up I accidentally stepped off the side of my trailer and ended up in another trance after my skull bounced off the side of a rain barrel as I fell to the ground.

I then found myself floating as gooey blob in a small puddle of rain water.  I could not move about or do much of anything but luckily, I was somehow able to see or sense my surroundings.  It would have been lonely in my new form except there was this other gooey blob beside of me who struck up an immediate conversation.

"Hey fellow blob, welcome to the puddle," he said.

"Well, hi," I said, my name is Mystic Madam Misty Murky Merkel and I am apparently having a psychic happening."

"Well," responded the other blob," I am an amoeba and so are you.  I was just formerly a tree squirrel but, I died and now I'm an amoeba in my current life.  Seems I've been demoted from Squirrel to single cell life-form."

"How'd that happen to you?" I asked.  

                                         

  "Well, back when I was a squirrel I did some stuff.  Stuff, I'm not proud of.   You see there were these chipmunks and I sold them this really rotten incense made up of decomposed acorns and they got sick.  They said that they got really runny noses and terrible headaches from my product.  Then they chased me into the street and a school bus ran over me.  And you know what the worst thing was?" he asked rhetorically.  After the school bus ran over me I heard a kid say 'hey look, the bus ran over a rat.'  Just think, the last thing someone said about me was that I was a rat."

"That's just awful," I said.  I just hit my head so I'm pretty sure I'll be waking up from this anytime."

"I wish I could say the same," the squirrel replied.  "Now that I'm just an amoeba I'll have to go through several life cycles before I get back to being a tree squirrel.  Let's see," wondered the squirrel out loud," I'll have to be a worm, then a frog then, a chipmunk before I get back to my tree squirrel status.  Of course eventually I want to move up to the highest life form."

"You mean you want to be a human," I asked.

"Heck no," replied the amoeba, former tree squirrel.  "I want to be a bear.  Bears eat humans so bears are above humans in the natural order of things."

"I guess from a food chain perspective then I guess a bear is the top creature in this neck of the woods," I observed.

"Of course after I get back to being a squirrel I'll have to go through several more reincarnations before I become a bear.  Let's see, I'll have to be an opossum, a weasel, a beaver, a fox, a coyote then finally, I'll have to be a raccoon.  Raccoons are just about like a bear.  They forage around and eat about everything but they're not big and powerful like a bear.   Of course I don't think I'll like being a beaver after floating around as an amoeba all day."

"It wouldn't be so bad if we had cilia like those amoebas over there," I said, referring to some little bug like creatures moving just to one side of the amoeba, former squirrel and me.

"Oh those guys?" my new companion asked.  "Those guys are really stuck-up.  They think they're something special because they can move around and they become really active if they think you're looking at them just to show off their powers of locomotion.   I hate those guys.  Just wait until I'm a squirrel again then I'm going to pee on them every chance I get."

"What kind of creature is attached to that big snotty nose that's poking down into our little waterhole?" I asked, referring to a black nostril ball that was so close it almost sucked me up from my puddle. 

"It's a dog and he is either going to drink us up or drop a load on us.  I've seen them do this type of thing before.  Of course if he drinks us down we won't stay in him for too long because we'll make him sick to his stomach.  Those other guys can keep their cilia because our type of amoeba is the kind that gets everyone’s attention and we are remembered for a long time.  We might not have any cilia to move around with but, we can make any host we happen to be in move pretty quickly to a place they can unload us along with their bowel and stomach contents."

"Well, here comes a big sloppy pink tongue," I observed, "so I guess this is goodbye."

"It's been really nice chatting with you," my companion amoeba commented.  "I'll try to look you up once I'm back to being a squirrel.  I'll leave a nice fresh acorn in your shoes for your dinner.  Acorns are so delicious and I know how to pick the good ones.  The caps have to be easy to pop off.  That's when they're good and ripe and ready to eat."

"I'll remember that," I said," and I'll look forward to finding an acorn in my shoe."  Then, we were both picked up by the sprawling tongue of a dog with a serious halitosis problem.