In the desert outside Jaisalmer (the one where they do their nuclear testing, apparently) last summer I was totally amazed to see these dung beetles moving backwards, usng their hind legs to roll pieces of dung several times their size. Now it seems they (or at least their African counterparts) navigate with the help of the moon.
Speaking of India, I have a friend who's a dung beetle, or at least he's on my shit list. Last year I accompanied him to India for a month while he criss-crossed the country researching his first novel. Just this week, after a year of work, he sent me the first chapter, and it has me pretty disturbed. A couple of the characters are pretty clearly caricatures of yours truly, although they may have been sliced and spliced to protect the innocent. At one point an email surfaces which is clearly a revised version of one I myself wrote to him - and the context isn't particularly endearing.
But I suppose whining is a little childish, and calling him a dung beetle is a little like spitting into the wind... where, after all, would I fit into that metaphor?
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