I guess I consider myself lucky. Like, in a very vaguely universal sense- I am alive and I am sentient and I get to live longer than a couple months, which is pretty much the average for life on Earth, and within human terms I am well off and decently gifted. All around, I got pretty lucky. And I know you are probably thinking jeez, I didn’t sign up for a philosophy lesson, which is valid, but bear with me. I think people don’t care enough about how lucky they are to be people. If we all just, I don’t know, took a step back and really looked- not at our lives, at what’s around us- I think we’d remember how lucky we are to be human. We too easily forget that humanity isn’t default, too easily look at what we have and assume that it’s not good because our lens of reference is limited to just humankind. But sometimes, and I’m going to tell you about one of those times, our perspectives are opened up by something beyond ourselves. They pretty much have to be, because as far as I can tell external perception is like a door with only an outer handle- we need someone to open it and let us out, and only after exiting the prison of anthropocentrism have we any hope of seeing life in its entirety. But I think that’s enough existentialism for now. I’ll get on with the story.
The thing that opened the door for me was not some fantastic view, or some charismatic megafauna everyone fawns over. It wasn’t some epically rare event, nor a fantastically tragic one- although, I will say, that depends greatly on your definition of tragedy (I believe that considering loss tragedy is a useless recipe for sadness. See, loss is, inevitably, part of life. I don’t feel like it can be bad by default. I don’t believe that the universe is bad by default, either, so since loss is default it simply cannot be inherently bad. But that’s just me.) No, what opened the door for me was so insanely mundane it feels stupid.
A roly poly. That’s who opened the door for me, that cool, grey spring afternoon last April. I told you it’d be stupid. I just flipped over a log, like I always do when there’s a log on the ground- you’ll never believe what you can find under them, but that is a story for another day- and there it was. I’d like to clarify at this point that this wasn’t some ordinary roly poly, and not just because it was the flat kind and not the kind that rolls into a ball. This one was purple. Neon, glowing, unbelievable indigo. The kind of color the sky gets on those clear summer days just after sunset; a blue-purple color that doesn’t deserve anything less than heaven’s curtains- but here it was, nestled among cobwebs and dead leaves and dirt.
I’m not sure if I’ve emphasized how strange a purple roly poly is. I know a lot about bugs. I can name them, scientifically and in English, I can tell you what they eat and how big they get and how long they live and where they can be found. I know which ones I can grab and which are bitey, and what they look like in different stages of their life… and yet, I could not for the life of me explain why that roly poly was purple. It was unacceptable. I could never have put the log back down without a token of my discovery. Like I said, I know things about bugs. One tiny lilac woodlouse wasn’t going to change that. So into the collecting jar it went, and home we went, and through the door of perception I went. No turning back now.
According to Wikipedia: A bright purple, blue, or iridescent-colored pill bug is likely infected with a virus known as isopod iridovirus 31. The infection is transmitted through consumption of infected specimen’s corpses. Specimens typically live about two weeks after onset of infection, with movement slowing greatly as the individual deteriorates. I look at the roly poly, sitting in a glass jar on my desk now, half-sheltered by a dry leaf. I read on. Isopod iridovirus 31, commonly known simply as “iridovirus,” kills its host by crystallizing its body tissues. That’s why infected specimens appear purple- light reflects off the crystals- and why movement slows with progression… I close the tab. I look at the roly poly again. It hasn’t moved.
That’s when the door really opened for me, I think, like, swung right out, so I was looking at the big picture outside whether I liked it or not. It seems so cruel that a creature so beautiful can be so morbid. There is no purple roly poly, anywhere on Earth- not even mine- that has longer than a couple weeks to live. The virus is so consistent in its degradation of its host that Oxford asks people to send in infected isopods they find to test antivirals on them. If their color disappears, the drug works, and the woodlouse could survive. If it doesn’t, no matter. The woodlouse will be dissected either way. It’s just sad, really. There’s this beautiful creature, totally unaware of how special it is, and equally ignorant of the death sentence tesselating in its flesh. Bugs don’t feel pain. They know the discomfort of losing movement, and the hunger that comes with it. Maybe they know what awaits them. But they are nothing like us. They do not give up as they sicken, nor do they modify their behavior just because they look different. Why lay down and die? To them, it is just another day. They don’t know how unluckily lucky they are to be the color purple.