SOS Gab & Eti 1.10

“and the dead dry stone no sound of water”

TS Eliot

A few months back Eti was stuck in a hospital for a short polyps
investigation and read in a National Geographic that termite flatulence
produces 33% of our carbon dioxide. Gabriel mentioned that he’d heard of a
termite circus down near Waco, Texas and maybe they should combine such a
sideshow with their road tour.

Gabriel is one of those eccentric people, with an overarching mind laced with
doses of Eti’s coffee, that goes about thinking up impossibly irrelevant
questions that nobody seems to have an answer to. Like, why don’t fired
hydrants freeze? Do rich people prefer gold or silver bathroom fixtures? How
many flies are there in the universe? How many nightcrawlers in a pound of
earth? Most people doing historical research just set limits and figure out
the time and energy. Gab jumps clean beyond reason and out-of-keeping with
the phlegmatic superfluities of historic reality

What he wants to know now is if America is infested with farting termites how
many of them are eating National Historic Landmarks?

To be continued.....

Copyright 1997 Ken Follett
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