Notes from a short life!

Originally posted at http://rustus.blogspot.com

Lokesh's diary: Summer 2009

"Today is a hot day in the peak of summer in this great land of ours, where we have lived since time immemorial. The sun will be out early, and the wheat fields will be ripe, golden and wavy.

Brothers, we swarm tonight!

For the glory of our race, we will go out in our thousands…no we shall go out in our hundreds of millions and show them what we were born to do. Our might army will come down like the rain, bringing darkness from the sky to level their fields down to the earth. Our feast will last many days and, when we are done, the devastation that will be left behind will bring nothing but hunger and death to those men who think of us as their enemies. Alone, these men think of us as mere insects that can be crushed under their feet. Together, we can bring them destruction they will remember for generations.

Brothers, our time here is short. We have to be together in this life and the next. Some of us will not survive the day- they will become martyrs. Gone to bring glory to our race, our lost brothers will join us in the after-life, where we will feast forever. In the other life, our fallen brothers will find endless fields of wheat and rice that will feed them for eternity. When it is our time, we will join them too in our endless celebration.

For the glory of our race, we have to be ready to strike first. Those that fall behind in our group, those that refuse to do their share of work for our race- we must slay them. We must slay them and consume them with our anger and our hunger. We must show no mercy. That is our way. We must remove all signs of weakness from our race. That is what we are born to do.

Ours is a short life. Our glorious afterlife will be forever. For the glory of our race, Brothers, let us go out in our hundreds of millions and show them what we were born to do.
"
- - -
Lokesh is a member of a desert locust swarm. Driven by hunger and fear, the swarms of hundreds of millions of locusts can strip fields and bring disaster to farmers that are unfortunate enough to have their fields on the swarm's path. Scientists are studying how the fear of cannibalization (of being eaten by another locust from the same swarm) drives the ferocity and intensity of the swarm's movement.

It could be said that a locust prepares to die when it joins the swarm, but we suppose this life is only a prelude to an everlasting, and glorious, afterlife for this creature.

(Links for more research on desert locusts, their eating habits, locust swarm damage, and scientific research on cannibalization and swarming). My previous post on a belief in afterlife is here.