Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 38
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 38 of 56
CHAPTER 38
After resting up a bit, then walking around the top of the mountain and enjoying the view in all directions, we gathered to discuss what we would do while waiting. It would be at least several days until all of the other animals arrived. Some of the Birds would get there sooner, but Alexis agreed to “hold down the fort” in case the rest of us wanted to go somewhere for a little “R & R.” She would let them know the rest of us would be back within a couple of days or so — we would certainly return before the slowest of the animals made it there.
Alexis would make good use of the time by training the Birds: Macaws of various colors, Toucans, Harpy Eagles, Wood Storks, Laughing Falcons, Stinkbirds, Paradise Tanagers, Boat-billed Herons, Anhingas, and others.
To skip the nitty-gritty of our long discussions (getting a group of 23 — all of us but Alexis — to agree on a vacation spot is tedious, aggravating, and time-consuming), we finally decided on visiting Kaieteur Falls in the Guiana Highlands, not too far away. Cascading down from a height of 741 feet, its falling-off point is four times higher than Niagara Falls. Since most of the Amazon Basin is flat, waterfalls are rare in the interior, but its edges are defined by hills and mountains, and that’s where the few waterfalls do exist.
As it was less than 100 miles from Mount Roraima to Kaieteur Falls, it would only take us a few minutes to get there at our accustomed speed of 969 mph. However, as we were on vacation and for once not in a hurry — and because the area was extraordinarily interesting to us — we slowed down to what seemed like a Sloth’s pace of around 50 mph and spent a leisurely couple of hours sightseeing on our way there.
We heard the waterfall before we saw it — some of us did, I should say. The humans saw it before they heard it, because their hearing is not nearly as acute as ours. We set our vehicles down between Korume Creek and the Potaro River above the falls.
We had to land a couple of miles upriver of the falls, as its roar was otherwise too loud for us to hear ourselves think, let alone understand what others were saying.
Albert had an idea that he considered to be brilliant. The rest of us wondered about it, though. That is to say, we didn’t know if it was 1) feasible, let alone 2) safe.
As best as I can recall, he put it this way:
“People used to ‘go over the falls in a barrel’ meaning, I think, they went over Niagara Falls in New York in an old pickle or whiskey barrel. That, though, was a recipe for disaster: the barrel would smash all to flinders and then its occupant would also — or, if they were preternaturally fortunate, simply get in a half-drowned condition and end up wetter than a Muskrat.
“I have a better idea, one that is more safe and fun: We construct a giant see-through bubble, made of rubber, with a circular steel rail on the inside, on which a seat is attached, or I should say connected. The seat would slide along the rail, thus acting as a sort of shock absorber — the inhabitant would ‘roll with the flow’ instead of being whiplashed when the big rubber ball hit something hard, like a boulder. The whole shebang would be kind of like a Gyroscope. The thick rubber from which the bubble-ball was made of would also be shock absorbing.
“Imagine the thrill of going over the falls sitting in one of those contraptions! You would see it all, and as the bubble-ball got spun around by thermal dynamics (the action of the water), you would slide along the rail and see first the bottom of the falls, then get spun around and see the sky above you, then down the valley, the side of the mountain ... it would be spectacular! Stupendous! Amazing! I would say ‘awesome,’ too, but that word doesn’t even register anymore, due to its overuse. It would be sublime! It would be poignant!”
“Poignant?” questioned Chapawee. “I don’t think that word” —
“Means what I think it means?” Albert finished her sentence. “Yes, I admit, I just like the sound of it. I was merely checking to see if y’all were paying attention. Some of you were starting to look a little glassy-eyed there.”
“Oh, we were paying attention, all right,” Chumbawumba said. “I’m with you — I would like to try it myself. I reckon once we hit the water at the base of the falls, we would bounce way back up in the air again, up, up, up, then back down into the water, up, up, back down into the river flowing away from the falls, up again, a little less high each time, until we finally would end up bobbing down the river, bouncing and bounding off boulders and such ... but then, after our fun and games, how would we get out again?”
“Oh, I’m sure we could work out a way,” Albert said. “That’s the least of our troubles. The only downside I can think of is those with a predilection toward nausea, dizziness, vertigo, or seasickness might suffer some moderately severe side effects.”
The thought of those “side effects” took the luster out of the idea for many of us. Those of us who have been sick as a Dog don’t want to go seeking opportunities to be such again.
“Well, for those willing to try it, I know how it could be done — the getting out of the bubble-ball conundrum, that is,” said Jowls.
We all looked at the Hippo expectantly.
“OK,” he said, “Ocero and I, and whichever Elephant is not currently having the time of his or her life in the bubble-thingy, could stand downstream in the river and intercept it as it came down, steering it to shore, where we could push it up the bank and you all could pull it up and out.”
“That’ll work,” said Albert. “But,” he sighed, “That was just me thinking out loud. It’s something for later, perhaps. We don’t have time for all that right now. We would have to gather the rubber (from the rubber trees in the forest), shape it into a large hollow ball, get some steel, bend that into shape, construct a nice comfy chair for the passenger ... it’ll take a lot longer than the couple of days we have, so we’ll have to put that idea on the ‘back burner’ for now, and think of a simpler way to pass the time while we’re here.”
I wondered why Albert even went into all that detail about the bubble-ball when he already knew (no doubt) that it wouldn’t be possible for us to try it out on this trip. That’s just the way humans are, I guess: always coming up with grandiose schemes that are only theoretical or hypothetical, not practical. We Dogs aren’t like that; less specifically, we animals are not like that.
“How about going over the falls in the Zephyr and the Androcles? And then flying out from the midst of the falls and following the river?” Rovette suggested.
“Oh, I could do that any time,” Terri boasted. “I don’t need to be perched on or sitting in the Zephyr or the Androcles to do that.”
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