The incident that changed everything

“The day my par­ents first saw me, they were very ex­cited. I was their first child and their last one as I found out later. My own life be­gins with me in a dark cham­ber, be­ing sur­roun­ded by plenty of de­li­cious food and no one around to bother me. For a long time, all I did was eat and sleep. My life was a dream, some would say. Were I to know my fu­ture, I would have never left that com­fort­able place. But I was brought into this world to do great things and to make this planet a bet­ter place, so I could not stay there forever.

Now, I have never told you who I am, right? One would think I am a king or a god after that pom­pous in­tro­duc­tion I gave to you. Well, you must know that I am none of the above. Our en­tire spe­cies would have been un­known in fact, were it not for that hu­mong­ous ball of dung we are push­ing around every time. Yes, dung, you heard it right. From all the things we could choose to make it our source of life, it had to be the waste from oth­ers… My food, my home, my life, even my name has dung in it. You guess it right, I am a dung beetle and I was not happy about that.

Be­fore telling you what was the in­cid­ent that changed my think­ing com­pletely, let me make you ac­quain­ted with the life of a dung beetle. We have a short life, and we live it by mak­ing per­fect spheres out of fresh ex­cre­ments, im­press­ing ladies with them, and bury­ing the ball in a nice place where we start a fam­ily. And no one is com­plain­ing about that. But there I was, a young dung beetle, be­ing re­bel­li­ous against nature and re­fus­ing to touch any­thing that looked brown­ish. My par­ents put it to the fact that I spent too much time on that ball of…you know what, without get­ting enough fresh air in my brain. “He’s young, let him be” my father would say, “It’s not go­ing to last forever!”.

Days after days went by, and, des­pite my father’s words, I could not ac­cept who I was, and my ma…”

“But grandpa! You prom­ised us a story with her­oes!”, com­plained the young­est of the beetles, in­ter­rupt­ing the story.

“Yes! We want the story with the Scra…Scaa…Scarabys!”, stuttered an­other one.

“Scara­baeus! Well, you might want to learn how to pro­nounce names first, cos’ I don’t know any Scra…Scaa…Scarabys.”, answered back the old beetle a little irritated.

He agreed to take care of the young ones while their par­ents were out with some busi­ness, but he was start­ing to re­gret it now.

“And who do you call grandpa? It’s Mr. Beetle for you. I am just a friend of your par­ents. How do you call your real grand­par­ents then, if I’m the grandpa?”

The young beetles star­ted to laugh. It is a strange thing how kids find the grumpy old ones al­ways funny. These young beetles were no exceptions.

“Now, where was I?! See, this is why you never in­ter­rupt your eld­ers!” said the dung beetle. “Nev­er­mind, I will just skip to the ac­tion. We don’t want you to get bored, do we?”.

“Yeeey”, said the young beetles at once.

So the old dung beetle con­tin­ued with his story. The desert was un­bear­able in the sum­mer, and there were no clouds to soften the harsh rays of the sun. But the dung beetles roll their balls of dung even in those con­di­tions, as they need to bring food at home. When their little legs are too hot from the burn­ing sand, they climb on top of the ball to cool them. This is why the par­ents of those little beetles ar­rived later than usual, leav­ing enough time for this old dung beetle to tell his story. “It was a day like this when I de­cided that I have to leave my home and find my pur­pose in life. You know that we don’t live long com­par­ing to other be­ings, so I had no time to waste. Three years of life, and I had already lost one.

My mother in­sisted to take her fa­vour­ite dung ball with me be­fore leaving:

“Do I have to bring this crap with me? I’m sure there will be enough wherever I’m go­ing!”, I told her.

“Ah! Look at you, un­grate­ful child, this is a gift from me so you bet­ter take care of it!”, was my mother’s answer.

“Good luck!” was all my father said. 

And that was the last time I saw my parents.

I guided my­self after the sun, dur­ing the day, and after the stars and the Milky Way dur­ing the night. I saw many spe­cies, some were enorm­ous and some I could barely see, so small they were. How­ever, I did not find any­one who could un­der­stand me. The fly­ing ones were the scar­i­est as I could see the hun­ger in their eyes when they looked at me. I didn’t like those.

One day, when I was not pay­ing at­ten­tion, a bird at­tacked me. I was hor­ri­fied! I screamed and screamed, and begged, then screamed some more, but that beastly thing didn’t want to let me free. I thought I was go­ing to die right there, alone. I was lucky that the mon­ster also took a bite from my dung ball and re­leased me as soon as that taste reached her sens­ible tongue. Serve you right!

When I opened my eyes, the bird was gone and a fel­low dung beetle was look­ing at me curiously:

“Are you dead?”

“Yes.”

“No, you’re not!”

“You might be a smart one then.”

“I don’t like you. You’re so mean.”, said the stranger be­fore see­ing his way.

“Ok, wait! Please don’t leave me here! I didn’t want to hurt your feel­ings. I’m sorry!”

Hear­ing those words, the stranger came back and asked “Who are you? What are you do­ing here alone?”

The near-death ex­per­i­ence might have made me soft be­cause I star­ted to tell this total stranger everything I have been through. The jour­ney I was so ex­cited about proved to be a fail­ure any­way, so I had noth­ing to lose. “I just wanted to crawl back into my com­fort­able nest and stay there forever.”, I said at the end with tears in my eyes. 

“Oh! I have an idea. Hurry, come with me!” said the beetle sud­denly, then run away.

“Where?”, but the other was too far away to hear me. So I fol­lowed the stranger. I had a feel­ing someone warned me against do­ing this, but I could not re­mem­ber who or why. Then, as we were ap­proach­ing a pile of fresh an­imal waste, I un­der­stood everything. That bas­tard took my words lit­er­ary and wanted to bury me in a huge ball of dung! I looked at him, then run away in the other dir­ec­tion. What was I think­ing? This is why you don’t fol­low strangers. They bury you in po…”

The young beetles were all sleep­ing quietly by now, shaded by bushes. The old dung beetle never man­aged to fin­ish his story, not even once in his en­tire life. The de­tails al­ways made the listen­ers fall asleep by the time he got to the part in which he saved Aus­tralia. Curi­ous? Ask the dung beetle to tell you that story next time you see him.

(writ­ten Novem­ber 6 2019)

Cor­ina Di­ana Ciocotișan

Editor’s note: This is our hero’s video clip loosely in­spired by his mem­or­able story.

Learn more about the dung beetle from this short video nar­rated by David Attenborough.