Some races say nature is a heartless mother, who can bring a new species into existence, and then, her attention drawn to another 'new idea', can turn her back on it and allow it to vanish, without shedding a single tear. I suppose that's true. Nature isn't about conservation: it's about renewal, about taking advantage of a new opportunity - a niche, if you will - where life, any life, can flourish. That's the whole point, isn't it? Nature isn't about lions, tigers, Morosaurs, snappers, or slime covered lizards from Lindar, it's just about being alive, however briefly and in whatever guise.
With this in mind, I suppose we shouldn't mourn the passing of the 'long-toothed Hossora', from Corridoor. It was a peaceful, eternally grazing creature, with four legs, a long swishing tail, floppy ears and puppy eyes. It knew nothing of interstellar pulse drives, the passage of time, or where the star that illuminated its world went at night. It simply ate as it slowly moved across the broad grasslands of its home and made baby hossora - oh, and a fair amount of doo-doo, too.
There were no humanoids on Corridoor, just your average carnivores, and they kept the hossora from breeding out of control. No humanoids, that is, until a nomadic race, the Ottuba, took evasive action to avoid being sucked in by a collapsing star and arrived there by accident.
As they emerged from their ship and took in their surroundings, they couldn't believe their eyes, or their good fortune. Just a short distance away, a huge herd was moving slowly by, grazing, apparently unaware of the Ottuba. They were enormous creatures, standing a full three meters at the shoulder - two meters taller than the Ottuba. But what they lacked in stature, the Ottuba more than made up in greed and ruthlessness. In the first day, the seventeen Ottuba slaughtered more than two hundred hossora. It was more meat than they could have eaten in a year, yet they took only cuts from the haunches - the most tender - and left the remains of the carcasses to rot where they lay. That was a bad move! During the night, a veritable army of carnivores descended on them, killing five Ottuba as they squabbled over the mountain of meat.
The following morning, the remaining Ottuba packed their belongings and headed back to their ship, but not before they removed the scrotums of several of the bull hossora they had killed to act as back packs in which they carried more of the delicious meat.
Well, I suppose you've guessed what happened next. The backpacks went down big on the Ottuba's homeworld, so they returned to Corridoor for more - changing their course several times on the way so the source of their new found wealth would remain their secret alone.
Over the next few months, using a variety of techniques, from simply shooting the defenseless creatures with their energy weapons, using ground vehicles to drive an entire herd over a cliff, or an aerial bombardment, they eradicated over half a million hossora. Under normal circumstances, the hossora could have absorbed even this rate of attrition - at least for a couple of years or so - but the Ottuba weren't after meat. They wanted back packs - scrotums - and soon concentrated their murderous efforts on the males alone. Within twenty months, the global population collapsed. All the carnivores, the scavengers, and the small creatures that cleaned up the bones and skin, which had gorged on the fallen hossora and consequently increased their own numbers way beyond the norm, would rapidly starve and follow them into extinction.
When their last visit to the planet was over, the Ottuba shrugged, loaded the final, grisly cargo and left. They were smiling all the way to the vaults - no more hossora meant the price of their 'product' went through the stratosphere. They became rich beyond imagination.
On Corridoor, a small, furry creature, with darting eyes, an opposed thumb on each hand and an agile brain, left the safety of the trees for the wide open savannah. With no predator left to keep its numbers in check, it had all the time in the universe to develop and prosper. It grew taller, even more intelligent, discovered fire, and began to use tools. Over time, its barking would become speech and mothers would begin to pass on their hard earned knowledge to their offspring. They would, one day, call themselves, Nat-Ur-Ban (People of Ban).
And what of the Ottuba, you ask? Their light was extinguished more than a forty thousand years ago, when their population was consumed by a viral pandemic. A few artifacts from their civilization were unearthed by an archaeological expedition from Tantula, ten thousand years after the last Ottuba had died. There were caches of huge leg bones, broad ribs and large skulls, with two long teeth in the upper jaw. There were also many relief carvings the Ottuba prized so highly. They were found on the interior, stone walls of their houses. A large number of these carvings depicted the 'hunt of the hossora'. Desiccated strips of animal skin were found in graves - contained in vacuum flasks - a few centimeters below the surface of the parched, desert sands, which covered the ancient city. These, along with the carvings, were transferred to the Tantula homeworld.
After eight millennia had ticked by, a few traces of Tantula's civilization were uncovered by the Gorazi, immigrant colonists on a nearby world, and taken home as trophies. The Gorazi were a strong and self-reliant people who, over time, had colonized more than a hundred worlds. Eventually, they reached the Om'Shin Abyss: a deep slash in the fabric of space and time. On a nearby world, they encountered the Tali-Ogmat: a humanoid race which, over time, had developed a symbiotic relationship with a worm-like parasite, which provided them, on demand, with the equivalent of a sexual orgasm. The Gorazi were intrigued and tempted, more than a little. Gorazi physiology was significantly different to that of the Tali-Ogmat and produced in them, what can only be described as a crack high. The parasites were transported in large numbers to the numerous Gorazi worlds. Over time, the inevitable outcome was a collapse of the Gorazi civilization, some two thousand years ago. Simply put, they lost the will to live.
The Mishram discovered one of the Gorazi worlds less than seven hundred years ago. Many artifacts were recovered and returned to their homeworld, which was eventually laid waste during their fifty year war with the Nat-Ur-Ban.
Last year, after decades of bloody conflict with several neighboring worlds, the Nat-Ur-Ban became the fifty-first race to join the Pandraxi Coalition. As a token of friendship, they presented the representatives of the other fifty races with trophies they had stolen from the Mishram. Along with a number of vacuum sealed, glass-like vessels, containing dried animal skin, they brought several dozen leg bones, a dozen broad ribs and three large skulls, each with two long teeth in the upper jaw. But their most prized possession, which they kept for themselves, was a one meter square section of a stone wall. On one corner, it was just possible to make out the head, neck and forelegs of a strange creature. Its eyes were large, almost puppy-like, and its ears flopped against its neck.
Spooky, huh?
Why not contact Alethea? She'd love to hear from you. And, do please take a few moments to visit the PETA website, and maybe do something towards ending the cruel exploitation of animals.
