20070421

Lengthy Examinations of the Mating Habits of West African Lake Midges

Unfathomable expanses of water begin to boil inexplicably. Teeming with ripples, the ether seems to wick wisps of mist off the surface. Soon, a column stretches two, three, five hundred feet into the air. It is one of thousands. Each constitutes nearly a million flies who will live long enough to connect, mate, lay eggs and die. Were they to come upon the presence of being to attempt anything outside of this protocol, they would still be dead before reaching the waters' edge. Their sole function in life must be as the link between what they eat and what eats them. They fill a niche within an ecosystem the size of a lake (albeit one of the largest lakes in the world) which to them is an entire universe. Their biome is the expanse of underwater for the majority of their short, short lives. In the fleeting moments of existence, they collectively burst through the tyranny of water's surface tension and explode into fingers of smoke drifting lazily down. The Fleenors were not unlike these flies.

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