Unai Elorriaga - Plants Don't Drink Coffee

What you do with wounds is pour hydrogen peroxide on first, and sometimes you can’t stand it because what hydrogen peroxide does is, it burns. And sometimes what you pour is alcohol, when the wound is bigger or when there is alcohol in the house, because sometimes there isn’t any. Afterwards you pour Merthiolate, but Merthiolate doesn’t hurt and you can pour liters of it on because it doesn’t hurt, although it’s very red. The tetanus shot is an injection and I remember those two words often: tetanus shot. And when I remember Ismael I always remember those two words.

That’s why we didn’t play soccer today. I didn’t take the ball out, because it’s covered in blood. And they put a white thing on Ismael’s head, a cloth. And Dolfo said Ismael is the Holy Father, and we called Ismael “Holyfather.” But we only called him “Holyfather” three times, because he didn’t like the name. We noticed quickly that he didn’t like it, and we called him Ismael again, like we always do. Because he just had a tetanus shot and that’s kind of like being sick.

And we didn’t play soccer, and we didn’t go to the abandoned house, because there are nails everywhere in abandoned houses. That’s why we went to the ponds today, to look at insects. I said to go to the ponds, because I always go with Iñes, but never with Dolfo and Ismael. Or with Bistu. But Bistu didn’t come today. Bistu is on vacation. I never go on vacation. Dolfo goes sometimes. Ismael never. That’s why I said to go to the ponds, because we couldn’t play soccer. But Dolfo and Ismael asked Why go to the ponds? What’s in the ponds? There’s nothing there. But I convinced them. I told them about the mysteries of insects. And that’s how I convinced them.

I told them about the spider. I told them there is a type of spider in the ponds that’s half brown and half red, like bicycles when they get rusty. Because bicycles are very very new at the beginning, but afterwards they always get rusty. And those spiders are that color. And they are very very small, but they are crazy too, because they catch five hundred insects every day, and eat them. Each spider, five hundred insects. And Iñes says no one knows where they put all that food, because they are very very small, only one centimeter long. And she told me at times there can be a million spiders, because they are so very small, and between all of them they can eat a hundred kilos of insects. And one hundred kilos of insects is a lot, because one insect weighs nothing at all, because we put maybe twenty insects on each corkboard, and the corkboard weighs nothing. So what must a hundred kilos of insects be like? A lot and a lot of insects. . a lot.

That’s what I told Dolfo and Ismael, the thing about the spiders, and they were a bit amazed, and started to feel like going to the ponds. And then I told them about grasshoppers. I told them how grasshoppers never fight. And I asked them, Have you ever seen a grasshopper fight? Because that’s what Iñes asked me, Have you ever seen a grasshopper fight? And I said I hadn’t. And Dolfo and Ismael said they hadn’t. And then I told them that grasshoppers don’t fight the normal way, with punches and guns and shotguns. That’s why you’ll never see them fight. What grasshoppers do is, they sing. And when they want to go to war with another grasshopper what they do is, they sing. That way they never get hurt. There is no army, and when a grasshopper wants to go to war it has to do it itself, it can’t send somebody else in its place.

And Iñes told me something else about grasshoppers. She told me that their ears are on their legs. On their knees. And Dolfo and Ismael liked that a lot, and they said they want to see grasshoppers’ ears. That’s why we went to the ponds today.

And I told them more things about insects on the way to the ponds. I told them about the tiger mosquito. The tiger mosquito is a mosquito with stripes, like a tiger. And it lives in China, I think. But it came here to live. And nobody knew how it got here, because it couldn’t have walked and it couldn’t have flown, because its wings are too small and there are lots of kilometers between China and here. More than a hundred.

But now they know how the tiger mosquito got here. They came in the wheels of trucks. Because tiger mosquitoes make their homes in the wheels of trucks, and then the wheels brought them here, because that’s what wheels are for, to go from one place to another. Iñes told me that, that the tiger mosquitoes came here inside wheels, and the journey was awful, because imagine traveling inside a wheel all the way from China. Iñes said the journey was awful, but now they’re happy to be here. Sometimes they are at war with our mosquitoes. Because our mosquitoes don’t have stripes. Our mosquitoes are like flies but skinnier.

There are no fish in the ponds, only toads. But Iñes sometimes tells me stories about fish. And I noticed that Dolfo and Ismael wanted to hear more stories, so I told them one about a gray fish. I told them it’s a very special fish, because Iñes told me it can’t eat lemons. Or bananas. The thing is, this fish can’t see the color yellow. That’s why it can’t eat lemons and bananas. Or yellow gummy bears. And sometimes the fish is hungry, and it swims by a lemon but it doesn’t eat it, because it doesn’t see it. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t think lemons get rid of hunger. Or thirst.

We can see all colors. I think. That’s why we have clothes in all colors. There may be some colors we don’t see, but not many. One or two colors, no more. That’s why we have clothes in all colors and watches in all colors and sweaters also. But fish and dogs can’t see all colors. People and dogs are different like that. And fish. Also, some people wear glasses. Fish don’t wear glasses, but people who wear glasses and fish are similar because they both can’t see well. I think that’s how things are.

They show things about animals on TV too, and yesterday I saw a lion trying to eat a turtle. But the turtle went inside its shell. The shell is the turtle’s body and the turtle’s house, and it’s a very hard thing, like a rock. Maybe not as hard as a rock, but very hard. And the lion couldn’t eat it. And there you can see how intelligent the turtle is, because the lion is stronger, and it has big, long teeth, and it runs faster than the turtle, because the turtle walks very very slowly, but there on TV you could see how the lion was trying to bite the turtle and it couldn’t. Turtles have very big eyes and I think they can see all the colors, like people. I don’t know how lions see. Like dogs maybe.

We’ve been at the ponds a long time today, Dolfo, Ismael, and I. But we haven’t seen any tiger mosquitoes. We’ve seen lots of spiders, two grasshoppers, many beetles. And Dolfo and Ismael started saying You can’t see the grasshoppers’ ears, because maybe they thought grasshoppers’ ears and people’s ears are the same, and they started to complain, and to say they wanted to see the grasshoppers’ ears. Because grasshoppers’ ears are in their knees. And they started to complain, Dolfo and Ismael, but I told them to be quiet, because something big happened then. Dolfo and Ismael didn’t realize, but a big thing happened, because a blue dragonfly came right next to me. Right next to my hand. And it was very still. But I didn’t catch it, because Iñes wasn’t with us and we didn’t have any glass jars to put it in and take it home. And you can’t catch a dragonfly with your hand, because you could break it. Dragonflies break very easily, like most insects. Not beetles, but all the others do. That’s why I didn’t catch the dragonfly, but it stayed very still, right next to my hand.

Afterwards I explained who that dragonfly was to Dolfo and Ismael, how it’s called Orthetrum coerulescens and there are very few in the world, and fewer still in this town. In this town there might be seven, maybe, and in the world maybe twenty or twenty-one. But I haven’t told them the other thing. I haven’t told them that the person who catches the blue dragonfly becomes the most intelligent person in the world. Because I think that’s a secret, because Iñes put her secret-face on when she said it to me. And Ismael didn’t take his eyes off the dragonfly, because he understood it was something important. But Dolfo didn’t look at the dragonfly much, and he said the water in the ponds is rotten, like lettuce.