was absolutely delicious and they could just fancy one.
32: CRUSHED IGUANA
T hey studied the enticing menu, with its dazzling array of choices. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger with salad and sauce, double cheeseburger with twice the salad and twice the sauce. Curiously there was no Iguana or fruit-fly on the menu. No open-ended list of as yet undiscovered life forms but, indirectly, that was what CD and Rachel were consuming.
Thousands of miles from where Rachel and CD stood there had once lived an Iguana. Had that Iguana still been alive it would have wept to see that facile menu (obviously being alive wouldn’t have been enough, it would have had to have been able to read, and speak English…and Iguana probably don’t cry anyway, but whatever…).
The Iguana, and millions like it, and millions more unlike it, for a tropical rain forest contains a wider variety of life forms than any other environment — with the possible exception of a sleeping bag at a rock festival — all these life forms had died in the service of Slampacker. They had been consumed along with the slice of gherkin smothered in secret recipe sauce.
Iggy had been chewing a fly when he first felt a tremendous rumbling. At first he thought that the fly must have disagreed with him and that he himself was responsible. But then the rumbling got louder and more terrible and Iggy realized in his little lizardy brain, that something was wrong. He knew his own bottom and no way was it capable of producing flatulence that was clearly going to feature on the Richter scale. This, Iggy sensed, was an approaching disaster, and of course he was right, which was no comfort at all. Being right is not as good as being alive. Suddenly Iggy found himself surrounded by plummeting species. Species which he had never seen before. Shaken from the various life levels that the forest houses were many creatures as yet undiscovered by humankind. Creatures that never would be.
They don’t cut down trees anymore, it’s too slow. They blow them up, or push them over with bulldozers. This was how Iggy and his host of little forest pals — whom Beatrix Potter would probably have called things like Simon and Jemima — met their ends, under bulldozers. For such is the demand for beef that the global hamburger addiction has fuelled that the rain-forests, which provide oxygen and change the weather, are being bulldozed down to create short-life pastures.
Besides the obvious undesirous side-effects, can be added the fact that much of science and medicine is derived from plant and animal research. It’s just possible that the undiscovered cure for cancer went splat the day Slampacker sent Iggy to join Dave the dolphin and Mrs Pastel.
33: IDENTIFYING THE ENEMY
S ly’s mind was in a spin. He wanted to punch their faces and shout: ‘Shut the fuck up about the environment!!’
Tex Slampacker could see that Sly was irritated by the discussion. ‘Look here, boy,’ he barked, ‘you know my burgers?’
Sly did indeed know them for although he could have afforded to eat an elephant full of caviar every lunch-time without going to the cash machine, he still secretly craved Slampackers and scoffed plenty.
‘Well, hell, we all know what the damn boxes are doing to the ozone layer, Christ I wish we’d never developed the damn things,’ he continued. ‘But we did and those boxes mean I don’t have to pay anyone to wash up dirty plates. I am faced with a cruel choice, gentlemen. Voluntarily cut my profits by re-introducing crockery, or subject the world to the risk of skin cancer.’ Tex Slampacker was deeply affected by this awesome moral confusion. Just framing the phrase ‘voluntarily cut my profits’ had felt like swearing in church. He was a hard man, not easily upset, but some things offended his conscience.
34: CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
T hat was it for Sly, he’d heard enough. He jumped to his feet. He was angry now. To think he had respected this man. ‘Cruel choice, Mr
32: CRUSHED IGUANA
T hey studied the enticing menu, with its dazzling array of choices. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger with salad and sauce, double cheeseburger with twice the salad and twice the sauce. Curiously there was no Iguana or fruit-fly on the menu. No open-ended list of as yet undiscovered life forms but, indirectly, that was what CD and Rachel were consuming.
Thousands of miles from where Rachel and CD stood there had once lived an Iguana. Had that Iguana still been alive it would have wept to see that facile menu (obviously being alive wouldn’t have been enough, it would have had to have been able to read, and speak English…and Iguana probably don’t cry anyway, but whatever…).
The Iguana, and millions like it, and millions more unlike it, for a tropical rain forest contains a wider variety of life forms than any other environment — with the possible exception of a sleeping bag at a rock festival — all these life forms had died in the service of Slampacker. They had been consumed along with the slice of gherkin smothered in secret recipe sauce.
Iggy had been chewing a fly when he first felt a tremendous rumbling. At first he thought that the fly must have disagreed with him and that he himself was responsible. But then the rumbling got louder and more terrible and Iggy realized in his little lizardy brain, that something was wrong. He knew his own bottom and no way was it capable of producing flatulence that was clearly going to feature on the Richter scale. This, Iggy sensed, was an approaching disaster, and of course he was right, which was no comfort at all. Being right is not as good as being alive. Suddenly Iggy found himself surrounded by plummeting species. Species which he had never seen before. Shaken from the various life levels that the forest houses were many creatures as yet undiscovered by humankind. Creatures that never would be.
They don’t cut down trees anymore, it’s too slow. They blow them up, or push them over with bulldozers. This was how Iggy and his host of little forest pals — whom Beatrix Potter would probably have called things like Simon and Jemima — met their ends, under bulldozers. For such is the demand for beef that the global hamburger addiction has fuelled that the rain-forests, which provide oxygen and change the weather, are being bulldozed down to create short-life pastures.
Besides the obvious undesirous side-effects, can be added the fact that much of science and medicine is derived from plant and animal research. It’s just possible that the undiscovered cure for cancer went splat the day Slampacker sent Iggy to join Dave the dolphin and Mrs Pastel.
33: IDENTIFYING THE ENEMY
S ly’s mind was in a spin. He wanted to punch their faces and shout: ‘Shut the fuck up about the environment!!’
Tex Slampacker could see that Sly was irritated by the discussion. ‘Look here, boy,’ he barked, ‘you know my burgers?’
Sly did indeed know them for although he could have afforded to eat an elephant full of caviar every lunch-time without going to the cash machine, he still secretly craved Slampackers and scoffed plenty.
‘Well, hell, we all know what the damn boxes are doing to the ozone layer, Christ I wish we’d never developed the damn things,’ he continued. ‘But we did and those boxes mean I don’t have to pay anyone to wash up dirty plates. I am faced with a cruel choice, gentlemen. Voluntarily cut my profits by re-introducing crockery, or subject the world to the risk of skin cancer.’ Tex Slampacker was deeply affected by this awesome moral confusion. Just framing the phrase ‘voluntarily cut my profits’ had felt like swearing in church. He was a hard man, not easily upset, but some things offended his conscience.
34: CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
T hat was it for Sly, he’d heard enough. He jumped to his feet. He was angry now. To think he had respected this man. ‘Cruel choice, Mr
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