Planet of the Tapir

           "Tell us a story, grandma," they begged me. I was sipping a lemonade that was just tart enough to make me pucker, and the way the littlest one hopped up on to my lap made me break into a smile almost as wide as the endless blue sky above us. It was a summer day, and we had the time. I only learned late in life that the very young and the very old truly understand value of time spent together. The others rush from project to project, too busy to engage in leisure, which is really the only reason that I can think of that we were put on this earth in the first place. Anyway, I was never too busy to tell a story.

           “It happened many years ago, long before you were born, that space travel was a new thing,” I began. 

           “Grandma!” interrupted little Nell. “Did the olden-days scientists really think that the moon was made of green cheese?”

           Little Nell looked hopeful. I paused. “I’m sure that some of them did,” I said.

           “Told ya so!” Nell shot a triumphant look at Timothy, who was only five.

           “No more interrupting,” I reminded.

           “Space travel was relatively new, and the leader of the western hemisphere, Brody Kupetzky, (or “Coop” for short) was determined to demonstrate the superiority of the eastern hemisphere over the western hemisphere by being the first to create a biosphere in space.

           Back in those days, we didn’t have the beautiful earth that we have now. People had become lazy and careless. We were dependent on the old automobiles and airplanes, trains and ships to get us from place to place. Factories pumped out carbon dioxide and pollutants into the air. Fish and animals were dying, and we’d gone for so long without addressing the situation, that people thought that the only option would be to start fresh on some new planet. At the time, everyone thought that the greatest achievement among the leaders of the world would be to be the first to establish the biosphere.

           Coop actually had begun as a principled and honest young man, but when he became the elected leader of the western hemisphere, he had become accustomed to power. For example, he first advocated to plant trees and reforest areas where the trees were chopped down or dying. But later, he had to backpedal. He wanted some rare sandalwood flooring for his office, which was to be made new, so he advocated most reforestation, but he permitted the chopping of sandalwood. And he loved so much to hear the music of natural birds that he had a pair of each variety known flown to the capitol and housed in a temperature-controlled environment so that he could always be close to their song.

           The problem, of course, was that the birds were not happy and they refused to sing, and it greatly wasted energy to keep all the world’s birds contained so artificially in just one location. Coop would be reasonably happy for a time, but whenever he saw that someone else had something that he did not, he became jealous, just as green as this soft grass that we are sitting upon, and that jealousy would drive him to do the most foolish things.

            The leader of the eastern hemisphere was a young woman named Eva, and she was also very enterprising. She was elected leader shortly after Coop had been. In an effort to distinguish herself, she created a new flag that featured an animal unique to the eastern hemisphere, the Malayan Tapir. Now, have any of you ever seen a Malayan Tapir?”

           Timothy nodded.

           “What does it look like?” I asked.

           Timothy squirmed. “Like an animal,” he managed.

           “In fact,” I said, “you are correct, it looks exactly like an animal because it is one. And it also looks a little bit like an anteater. They are big, over 700 pounds, and some might even say that it was not the animal that one would immediately think of as being a perfect symbol of governance. They look a little piggish, a little anteater-ish. They have white underbellies, and they whistle through their upper lip. They love to eat the most tender green shoots and leaves.”

           “Cool,” said Little Nell.

           “Well, that’s what Coop, thought, as well. The Malayan Tapir was endangered, and it was unique to the eastern hemisphere, so it was something that Coop would never be able to obtain, and that made him furious. The rumor was that he’d initial tried to steal one. He’d sent over a team of spies that were to tapir-nap the animal and bring him back to the western hemisphere.

           As you can imagine, it was a difficult operation. Ultimately, the tapir could not board the aircraft because it exceeded the weight limit of the ramp which it had to climb up to board the aircraft and fly home. Poor planning on the part of the western hemisphere, I must say. Perhaps it was lucky, as some others suggest. I can’t imagine that there would have been a men’s room, a women’s room and a tapir’s room on the plane, and tapirs do not wear diapers.”

           Timothy began to giggle.

           Little Nell asked, “So what did Coop do?”

           “Coop decided that he would build his own habitat for the tapir, that he could do it on another planet, and that he would send the tapir to the new planet to reproduce and so that there would be many tapirs and the animal would not be unique to the eastern hemisphere. So, he assembled a bigger team. He sent them deep into space to explore a planet where the tapir might be able to live. By this time, Eva was finding her own place in the world, so to speak. She had heard of Coop’s interest in the tapir, and when she heard that he planned to acquire a tapir and populate a new habitat, she became angry that he was robbing her of what made her unique. She therefore began her own program of chasing Coop and his team, setting out to destroy whatever planet Coop decided to investigate for purposes of establishing his biosphere. 

            This caused much commotion. Coop had scientists working day and night, studying the temperatures of various planets, how they could be kept at optimal temperature, and what would need to be done to produce enough light and food and water for the tapir to survive. Eva had her scientists working day and night, tampering with the data that Coop had collected. When it finally became time for Coop to explore the nether regions of space by aircraft, Eva raced him there with a spacecraft of her own, determined to destroy his craft, or any area he could identify as a potential habitat for the new tapirs.”

           “Grandma, were there lasers?” Timothy asked.

           “Most certainly.”

           “Grandma, was there fighting?” Little Nell asked.

           “Almost incessantly,” I replied. “In fact, most nights were filled with the most spectacular fireworks, staccato notes of gunfire constantly in the air, and bright flashes of colored lights as the two hemispheres tried to bomb and destroy one another, all in the name of trying to find a location for a new generation of little tapirs to live.”

           “Did anyone die?” Timothy asked.

           “Curiously not,” I answered.

           “Then what happened?”

           “Didn’t I tell you not to interrupt?”

           Timothy shook his head. Then he paused. Then he nodded. “I forgot.”

           “Yes, well, nobody died, but as Eva and Coop fought against one another, the citizens of the eastern and western hemispheres began to think for the themselves, and they got to thinking how their efforts to save the tapir were destroying all other kinds of resources, planets were being destroyed, advancements in science sabotaged, all for the purpose of satisfying the egos of Eva and Coop.

           The citizens became frustrated and created a council. Many advancements had been made towards establishing the new biosphere, but each time the scientists progressed, their plans would be dashed by the efforts of one or the other leader. Finally, it was decided that both leaders should be punished, for their failure to properly govern, for their neglect of the people, for wasting and destroying our resources both on the planet and in space.

           So, the council decided that the thing to do would be to exile the two leaders, to remove them and to put them somewhere where they could do very little harm. Their punishment was that they would, however, be put into the same location as one another, and they would have to figure out the error of their ways and learn to get along. As a reminder of how foolish they had been, the tapir was to be sent with them.”

           “How was it done?” Timothy asked, before clapping his hands over his mouth to keep from being chided again for interrupting.

           “I was just getting to that part,” I said. “Ironically, they were both told that they were being sent to the new biosphere and that the tapir was being sent with them, and that whoever could catch the first tapir could have the first choice among tapirs to keep. They were then shipped out to their own biosphere, on the third planet from the sun, to fend for themselves. And do you know what?” I asked.

           “What?” the children asked.

           “The story goes that after they discovered that they would begin new life on the third planet, they engaged in similar behavior all over again, destroying the land, the water, the animals, dumping chemicals into rivers and oceans, all over again! Do you believe that? How silly is it that they didn’t learn their lesson?”

           “Grandma,” said Timothy. “Will that ever happen again?”

           “Not likely,” I said. “Now we believe in the hive mind, so people all just concentrate their thoughts on love, peace and happiness, and we will all get along, and that’s what you and Little Nell should do as well.”

           “Grandma,” said Little Nell. “Don’t we live on the third planet from the sun?”

           I was about to answer, but we were interrupted. The children’s mother was calling them. It was time to come in for lunch, then time to practice the flute, and to go to baseball practice and to study for school, so I simply told the children that I would see them after dinner, and I took a long, slow sip of my lemonade, enjoying the birdsong and the warm rays of the summer sun as they filtered through the canopy of green.