2 May 2023 3:24 AM (musing)
Oh, you don't think I pay attention?
I pay attention.
Foxes. Most successful beastie there is. Arctic foxes up north. Lightning foxes frolicking through auroras and discharges. Corsac foxes bounding over the steppes. Datafoxes prowling networks and twixtnets and caching the finest things they find. Fennec foxes prowling the deserts and tracking tiny friends by sound at a dozen yards. Starfoxes flying through space and repelling energy weapons by doing a barrel roll.
And so I demand to know:
Whither the Antarctic Fox?
Antipodal fox? Countervulpine?
The Southmost Renard?
Whatever you want to name it, where is it?
“The Andes!” you might say, “Arctic foxes don't live at the North Pole!”
…well, yeah. There's no land beneath the North Pole. I know that much. But there is land at the South Pole. Lots of it. So much land you'll be sick from it. You'll feast on land so deep, so gorged, so thoroughly that you'll throw up uncontrollably whenever you so much as think of land. You'll get the dry heaves for days after. You'll be thrown out of the Georgist councils. Your social life will be ruined. Every time you try to open your mouth to sing a chorus of “The Land” you will heave forth every meal you've ever eaten.
That is what happens if you even start to eat Antarctica.
That's how much land there is in Antarctica. And you'll tell me foxes can't get closer to Antarctica than the Andes?
You can't fool me.
“There's no Antarctic Bears! No Antipolar bears!”
Sure there aren't. Sure there aren't. And do you know why? Because the Antarctic Foxes drove them out. Nothing gets that good at secrecy without being seriously scary.
An entire, thriving, secret ecosystem of foxes that nobody on earth knows about? Of course the polar bears would run like heck to get away as fast as they could.
Maybe writing this is a bad idea. They'll read it. They'll know I'm on to them. They'll come for me. Next thing you know there'll be an impossibly quiet whisper of fur as soft to the touch as an angel's sleeping breath, and then…