Invisible Beasts Read Online Free PDF

to know each other, some aspects will draw us again and again by well-trodden paths, while others will be less visited. Our wives and husbands, partnersand lovers, the very people closest to us, are crowded with unknown personalities. But our time together is limited, so we cannot learn them all. We scarcely have time to know ourselves. We stick to a little circle of familiar faces, and are surprised when a new acquaintance speaks up from the pillow, or a stranger offers a cool nod. Now does Niche Night seem more familiar? The Keen-Ears and the “Flu-huggers” share an ancient human problem: love is too big a task for our allotted time.

4

    A nyone can see an invisible beast once it’s dead. Usually, though, the opportunity arises on the roadways after the invisible animal has been squashed flat, and nobody stops to inspect it. Biologists sometimes notice the odd corpse, but take it for a specimen of yet another unknown (visible) species; after all, according to the National Geographic, some 86 percent of living species have yet to be described. Viewed in this light, the discovery described here was serendipitous .

    The Pluricorn

    T HE DRIVER OF A F ORD PICKUP spotted something antler-shaped in the breakdown lane. He pulled over, expecting a tasty hoard of venison. What he found instead, he photographed and posted on the Web with the caption “Dead Dinosaur Deer.” The posting drew comments from the scurrilous to the reflective from hunters, bone hunters, and information gatherers.
    â€œFaking a giant rack is just one of those things a real man doesn’t do,” quipped a hunter. A paleontologist posted an earnest plea not to spread dinosaur hoaxes, as they bolstered antiscientific prejudice in the American public. Evie sent me the link with a note: “Pluricorn?”
    The photo did resemble a Pluricorn. They live in my woods, and I know no other animal whose males are so patently designed for misery. The best sketch I’ve made of a specimen was typical—a young male, nibbling hawthorn leaves. He was especially pitiable in May, when other species are showing off their renewed beauty and spirits. As I strolled on one of my trails, illumined by new green mistsin the boughs of the oaks and ash trees, I saw signs of creaturely grace everywhere. Two red fox pups who lived in a rockpile were sunning and stretching, rumps raised, heads low, tails flourished like new ferns, and on the other end, pink tongues outfurled like petals. A mother Cooper’s hawk, meat in her beak, flew toward her nest through tangled branches as if they melted before her. The very ground lost its dullness where grape hyacinths and violets spread like gaps of sky. And from the throats of toads who resembled clods, issued a sweet trilling chorus that swelled like woodwinds, sank, swelled again, and never ceased.
    Into this charming scene came the wretched Pluricorn. The moment I spotted him—a movement of sun-dapples cohering, the way it does, into an animal shape—I knew the reason for certain bizarre rub marks on the hawthorns that earlier had puzzled me. This beast was too hungry to care about my lurking presence. Craning into the leafage, he sported a barbed brow horn, a fringe of curly tusks, a horn projecting from his chest, and big spurs, like ivory artichokes, on his rather knock-kneed legs. Over his head, a massive rack cast a grotesque, thorny shadow. Poor beast, he kept bashing himself on the hawthorn trunk, or tipping too far to one side and pawing rapidly to adjust. My stomach hurt to see him; how was he going to feed all four of his? Sketching him quickly on my notepad, I analyzed the details afterward.
    Chinese water deer have tusks, though fewer than the Pluricorn. Most of his equipment looks like antler tissuegone berserk, but his leg spurs look like naked bone protruding from under his skin. That has to hurt. Pathologies come to mind, galloping bone cancers . . . Such airy speculation