Root Arrange with Triangular Frosting
Despite
being annoyed by the slanting surface of his camp table, the Old Naturalist
managed a smile as he looked down at the day’s work laid out in a pie chart
before him. Clearly, he thought as he
swatted away a bug, the cake trees that once covered these hillsides must have
borne such dense foliage that the earth immediately around their trunks was
barren except for tiny communities of shade-loving toadstools wherein the
university maintained its Flounder Balancing Program. What a wonderful birthday present.
For indeed
it was the Old Naturalist’s birthday.
Julie and Andrew entered the tent with a guacamole replica of the
now-extinct cake tree’s fruit.
“As well as
we can conjecture it, of course,” Andrew added unnecessarily as he and Julie
brushed pie charts and bugs and pictures of Cate Blanchett off the table and
placed their gift before the older man.
“Well,
well,” the Old Naturalist declared, inspecting this eminently edible model from
one side and another, finally getting a dab of green paste on the end of his
long, warship-like nose. The laughter
that greeted this accidental adornment was prissy and staccato, like the eggs
of some captive passerine birth that knows exactly how to open the door to his
cage, but lacks the proper tool for the job.
“Poor old
bird,” my mother commented, shaking her head.
“Poor old
naturalist,” I countered with a stern wag of the finger.
.
