Reading | "Animal Strange Record": 17 "stars" animals ups and downs human encounters

A bird that was buried by Mozart, a elephant turtle that was "discarded and abandoned" by Darwin, a rhino wandering in Dalo and Dali, one ended in a very cold place to wait for the highest price. The frozen elephant, a spider who has been weaving in the space, and a circus with a unicorns ... These 17 kinds of "stars" animals in mythology, historical suppression or news. What happened later?

In the "Animal Strange Record" recently published by Guangxi Normal University, Elena Passarello, a cross -border emerging writer of the United States, gathered the life story of these 17 "stars" animals. The wet animals are salvaged in the long river of news and memories to turn it into a moment of shocking moment in human culture and social history. From prehistoric frozen caves, to workshops in NASA Sky Lab 3; from the cabin of the Darwin small hunting dog, to Dalo and Dali's canvas ... 17 exquisite and beautiful, different styles of essays, with documentary ingenuity Romantick with a novelist.

"Animal Strange Record"

[U.S.] Elena Passarello

Cheng Li Translation

Published by Guangxi Normal University Press

"Animal Strange Record", a collection of non -fictional works about animals, is a small history of montage in the relationship between man and animal relationships. It is a new animal fable in the later human age. In the century of the "human" concept collapsed, we need to recover ourselves from the eyes of animals. Passarello said: "The animals in my mind are bright, gorgeous, and painful errors. It is my impermanent desire and a proof that I want to ignore the cruel reality."

>> Selected reading in the text:

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On the hard land of stones, he found the fierce elephant.

She was lying on the highest point of this continent, and the sea she was coming began in July each year, and it would freeze again in September. A ivory hunter found her first, first saw a rock, and then identified the shape embedded in the rock: feet, dry wrinkled side abdomen, and an empty eye. She hung upside down, on the half -frozen rock wall, her long nose stretched down the cliff, like a heavy chain.

Soon, he discovered -as if he was applied to some ancient magic, she was still furry. The golden red fluff is attached to her feet, hips, and the rocks supporting her. The fluff is thick and bright, just like the light yellow hair on the small doll in the discount shop. The hunter who cut her out of the permanent frozen soil -the name should be Vasili -not talked about how he did it. But no matter what he used, it seemed too easy. In 39000, a monument should be established to commemorate. But Vasili just took off a white earrings from himself and inserted it into the mud that was melting.

To move the big rocks that have preserved her for thousands of years, it takes four days no matter which road choose. Vasili called a group of people and tied her carefully to a mobile sleigh, and then went on the road. Snow somewhere from the Utacolita area to the village of Rapdov and the Village of Uzykuka. Even if the summer temperature melts snow, the speed is still slow. But she couldn't resist the heat, her body was relaxed, and after three days, her body temperature was almost close to the living creature. 900 meters north of the world's coldest cities, they finally stopped her slate in a secret ice hole. They just changed from a cold place to another, waiting for a person with the highest bid.

Vasily and his companions speculate that any 21st century human -either scientific enthusiast, or ivory plunder, or adventure fanatics -climb into the cave, tore off her blue oil cloth, the first At a glance, when you see the plush animals from the update, you will be tempted. It is an exciting thing to find a fierce elephant in an ice -bearing cave. The invention of language should be far later than human thoughts and experiences, and it is later than mammoth. The image of "furry mammoth" is almost synonymous with time, even surpass the word "time" itself -after all, the human brain has limited understanding of time, and even the memory of several years is not reliable. Few people can experience the length of a century, and the brain that can feel the ten centuries is very small even in dreams. Ask your brain, what memories can still be eliminated and reach after 100 years? Not to mention 400 100 years.

Therefore, a frozen mammoth elephant has more significance. She is not just the gloomy dead lying in the cave, leaning against the slate, and the round feet, not just the fire red hair that we touch through the gloves back and forth Velvet, or patted into the nose of the corner of the number. Our gloves continue to walk upstream in her body, and a huge and strange wound will be found along the spiral stomach -what caused this? It is not a teeth, not a claw, but a sawtooth -like tool, which can firmly grasp the hand -gripped tool in the thumb.

Among all the images of our world, animal images have long been hidden in human memory. When we didn't know what they called, and even before we fully saw their appearance, we felt their call. It is as if they have been waiting for a secret place in our body for a long time, wearing rough outlines; as if the human brain has seen every animal long ago, all their images are swallowed into memory Essence We finally found their roughly appearance, passing through the mountains, through the clouds, as if it appeared on the psychic plate. We planned the arc of their noses on the soil, or carved them on the wood with the most sharp tools at hand. Give us a stick and we can draw them. Finding an abandoned antlers on the grassland, we can lock their residence with the tip of the corner; we have continued to knock on the wall of the cave with a stone until we engraved a cow. We also give their appearance to the night sky, and the stars: Did you see it? They were running while blinking. Starting from the mammoth mummy on the ice cave slate, a series of animal chains can be formed, all pointing to the past. The mixture of the soft limbs and fur stretching, it became a prestigious beast, with running legs, and a strong digestive system. When people touch her, it is like touching the thick skin in the circus or a huge children's toy. Her dry body seemed to be full of flesh and blood in the heart of the touchr. Slowly, in your impression, she became a paper -cut hanging on the cradle car, which is the kind of toy that specializes in the focus of newborn eyes. The limbs made of paper shake at the end of the hanging line, like she is a trot. The red -haired elephant that was found in the cave was named Youka. She brought the viewer to a farther place. It was not hidden in the brain, but the bone marrow, fiber and In the memory in the shrinkic acid. Deep in the flesh, the ancient world began to tremble lightly.

39000 years ago, the young Youka set off. She could have run all her life -the land of 39000 years ago gave her room for running. If she is willing, she can walk through the entire prairie. If you walk east, if you walk out of the place that is not called Yicorgir, she can go to the place where it is not called Felbax. Without the ocean to block her, there are almost no trees, only some sparse plants, she can pull them up from the frozen soil with their noses. Or, she can also walk south, walk through a long journey, or stand up, or form a group, and has been migrating, constantly lifting, and continuously falling. In the rolling dust, the outline of the foot is blurred. In the long journey of 8,000 miles, they have to avoid the fatal silt swamps, and to be careful of the lions that are continuously calculated -to be precise, not the lion we see today, but it is still the same as the lion's speed. Fast, hunting and fierce creatures -these predators also endure the cold of 8,000 miles, hungry day by day. That sun is still today's sun, but it is brighter in the cold sky. The mainland is still today's mainland, but now the area is three times, like a obese bear, sitting down with one butt, occupying half of the planet.

At the edge of the prairie, a group of animals that can no longer appear at the same time have passed here. This is almost a "Where is the Fantastic Animals", reindeer, dogs, bears, bears, lions, jungle leopards, and Arctic foxes that were not Europe at that time. All these animals you can imagine run along the river with Youka, and flowing a soft and deep cave in a few miles of limestone. They ran through the grass, traveled from the river, and passed by human beings. At that time, the grass was not the pasture, and the river water was not the pond, but people were always human.

On the grassland, a silent hunter is ambush. Compared with other limb movements -such as fighting, teaching, sleeping -he spent more time on observing animals in his life. If you want to survive, human beings have to hide their weak bodies and wait quietly when those stronger giant animals move, mate and die. Imagine how much interesting details have been preserved in his body after watching this life! Imagine that the people of generations put their lives into the grassland and keep their observations. This accumulated observation can act on humans, and it is incredible to think about it.

If you want to survive on the prairie, humans must be familiar with the lion's neck, the back of the bison, and every inch of the muscle on the stomach's side abdomen in order to escape the danger in time. Before the human brain gave birth to other thinking, it was just the form of life activity: the confusion of estrus, the frustration of scarceness, and the eternal sleep of death. How can a creature be rich and inherited from these land knowledge for generations without feeling that it has penetrated into blood, bones and muscles? How many hunters have observed their lives in their lifetime, so that they are hysteria, drizzle and dizziness? Does the image of those animals rush out and break out in their chests?

When a mammoth with golden red hair rushed into the field of vision, the hunter couldn't help nervous. The sun was rising, and her hair seemed to be on fire in the sun. Her body is big enough to have her own space in the beast group. But she was still too young, shaking when she was running, she couldn't keep up with the rhythm. The hunter knows that she will be the predator's preferred goal. She suddenly turned around and launched a counterattack against the lion who was closely chasing, but she just stomped her thick and rounded feet -she was not used at all, and she panicked. Meng Xuan turned around and continued to run, but twisted his feet, and soon fell. "That's now!" The hunter thought, as if he was drilling into the body of the lion, and the lion seemed to understand what he meant, and jumped up and jumped from the side to the back of the mammoth. The first bite was bite on her tail, which was enough. The mammoth was fascinated on both sides of the body, and it was faintly visible to this day. She twisted her golden red neck and wanted to break free of bite, but eventually fell down.

It's time for hunters to gain observation results. He moved forward -not running, but taking a firm and uniform step, and at the same time took out weapons. He had to scare away the lion. I have lived with the lion for many years on the prairie. This is the technique learned from the lion. To steal the prey from the lion's mouth, he had to become a lion. "It's now." He said again -this time he said to himself. He was looking for the rhythm of transforming into a lion in his body, and it was in one blow.

The lion ran away, and quickly became a trivia. The hunter knows how the lion deal with the mammoth, so the next thing is very neat: he holds one hand on the side abdomen that she is still heating, and the other hand lifts sharp utensils and scratches her back. He only removed the most useful part from her: the fat and meat on the spine, organs, and legs. I don't know why, he took off the skull, but did not take it away. He buried the corpse and the remaining flesh in the grassland and waited for it to come back later. At this moment, he doesn't know how long it will take.

The deep wound on Yica's back is 34,000 years earlier than the giant stone formation, 3,000 years earlier than humans, at least 30000 years earlier than wine, textile, coin, or beekeeping. The sharp wounds on Yica almost and the bone flute dug out of German rocks in recent years -it can play the five -sound steps made by the birds -and the 40,000 years ago in the cave. The lion head is as old as. In the first 5,000 years after Yica's death, some people built cottages, fees and cemeteries with Mengya. In the bodies observed from the ancient hunter for generations, European buildings were born.

In 1,3000 years after Yuka's death, a woman — the known first wizard — lying in the grave and holding a fox in her arms. People will wear two fierce scapulas on her, apply yellow -red vermiculite paint on the bones. Around her, people will pile a bunch of pottery -the shape of the clay is burned into the shape of the dog, the shape of the bear, and the shape of the horse.

About the same period -if it can be called "period" -a hunter walks alone to a cave in a certain place. Although he was observing animals throughout his life, he was not ready to kill today. He will find a huge limestone arch, one end is strong and thick, and the other end is a narrow round rock. The arch looks like a fierce elephant jumping from one stone to another on the river.

"Now, go, collect them." He collected them all in the hidden cave by the river, and under the "jumping mammoth" limestone arch, there has been a beast footprint for hundreds of years. Collect lion, rhino, wild goats and cattle. Collect cave bears, lions and wolves. Collect them with the tip of the pine branches and collect them with charcoal powder and pupae. However, the largest animal, the most memories of those hunters -keep in the depths of the cave, let them stay away from direct sunlight and those hunters who can carve them with stones or woods into utensils. You can find them in the darkness deep in the cave, and the huge wild bear sleeps there.

He walked into the cave, lit a branch, and wanted to see if there was any desirable things. He and his imagination between 10,000 years can be within reach. The beasts that go out out of his body are no longer distanced. The deep part of the cave was narrow, and the root of the tree above his head released the turbid air. The animals on the rock walls of the cave were stunned in his short breathing, on his wet fingers. The light spread on the rocks, and it looked like a lion.

He touched the soft wall with his hands, and she was there, running for 8000 years. He imagined himself as a fierce elephant so that he could feel how she ran towards his palms quickly, and his strong limbs became blurred. The palm of the rocks and her red hair, his beating heart and her running limbs, slowly merged into one. The shadow of flames and branches, together with yellow -red vermiculite paint, outline their appearance, like their fur. Their noses swayed down, and a black cracks penetrated their back. Their brown palms closed in the limestone and released again.

This time, he found a mighty elephant in the rock.

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Author: Elena Passarello

Edit: Zhou Yiqian

Editor in charge: Zhu Zifen

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