CHAPTER 3
Dorp in the Desert
photo: nps.gov
Dorp
and Sam were finally in the sunshine, in a breeze blowing through a
stretch of arid country.
Sam
was happy and said, “It’s so nice to be free of those critters,
but it was an interesting ride.
A horse is longer on the inside than
he is on the outside.”
“That’s
true, Sam. You have to travel farther to get through a horse on the
inside than on the outside. That’s a good observation. Anyway, we
have undergone a process called evaporation.
In the middle of this word is the root word vapor.
We are now vapor, a gaseous form of water.”
“So
this is where we get to sail on the winds?” Sam asked.
“That’s
right,” Dorp replied, “but just as important; our evaporation is
also our purification.
We left the contaminated horse, the dung fly, the mouse and the owl
behind. We escaped the owl pellet by evaporation and
became pure water again.
We have left their germs behind. I imagine
your mother doesn’t like mice or mouse germs, hmm?”
“No
Way! Mom goes freaky-crazy when she sees any of that stuff. Oh,
what does it mean to be pure water, Mr. Dorp?”
“Sam,
there are a couple ways to define pure water. The first is to be pure
in the chemical sense. Water is chemically pure when there are no
other chemicals in a container of water; no minerals; nothing. This
is called distilled water, which is what we are right now. However,
water is pure for human use when it contains no toxins or poisonous
life forms. For example, your drinking water has minerals which come
naturally. Public tap water may also have chlorine and fluoride added. "
“So
you’re saying that as water, we are pure again after we evaporate?”
Dorp
replied, “That’s right. As long as the air we evaporate into is
relatively pure, we are then pure and safe and usable to support life
forms again. This is not true if we were in a cloud passing over an
erupting volcano. One of the compounds being expelled from the
volcano contains sulfur. When dorps mix with sulfur dioxide, sulfuric
acid is formed. That makes us poison again.
Well, we’re well into in Nevada now.”
“Mr.
Dorp, does this mean we’re going to go through another horse?”
“I
don’t know Sam. I seldom get the same assignment twice in a row,
but it can happen. Here we go. We’re being taken up by a breeze,
which brings us closer to the sun and exposes us to more sunlight. We
will rise even
higher and perhaps into the upper troposphere.
“The
upper who?”
“Upper
troposphere, Sam. Humans have divided the earth's atmosphere into five
levels; the troposphere, whose lid is at 4-12 miles from the surface
of the earth. This is where most weather occurs. Next is the
stratosphere, which tops off at 31 miles above the surface of the
earth. Then the mesosphere, which extends to 53 miles up. This is
where meteors burn up as they enter the earth’s orbit. Finally, the
thermosphere and exosphere are the last two layers, which end at
6,200 miles above the earth. Above this point, satellites are free to
orbit. So we can travel up to 12 miles off the ground. But if we don’t get
high enough before evening, we may drop toward the ground. We are
over a desert, and the night coolness causes water vapor to drift
lower and condense in the desert,”
Sam
calculated, “If we fall as precipitation in the desert, why doesn’t
the desert get green?”
“That
again is a matter of perception, Sam. To you, green means enough
rainfall to support crops or grass that needs mown. The truth is,
every area of the earth receives some water, and except for humans,
nature works out the balance of how much life an area can support. Humans move into an area and expect the water to follow them.
There used to be a saying when the white people were settling the
Western US, ‘The rain follows the plow.’ The dust bowl proved that to
be false.”
“I
sense that you don’t always respect people."
“You’re
right Sam. Though humans are the most intelligent life forms on the
planet, they think that there should always be natural resources to
meet their needs and their wants.”
“Why
is that, Mr. Dorp?”
Dorp
explained that when people first existed, there were a very few
people on this great big planet. There was an overwhelming amount of
resources for a very few people. As the human population grew, there
came a time that people started using resources fast enough to use
them up.
“Most Americans expect water to be there forever. That is not always the case. All over
the world, the number of gallons of water available per person will
keep getting smaller, both because there are more people, and because
there is less fresh water is available because of water poisoning.”
Sam
asked Dorp, “How does water poisoning reduce fresh
water?”
“In
the old days, as your Grandpa Ed would say, water was regularly
poisoned to do work for people. People did and still do mix water
with antifreeze for their cars. Farmers use water to dilute
pesticides and herbicides to kill pest and weeds in their crops that
would otherwise destroy their crops, which means fewer people can
eat. City dwellers also use chemicals to care for their lawns, homes,
pets and automobiles. When these poisonous chemicals are mixed with
water, the water is no longer fit for drinking.”
“Can’t
this water be distilled or evaporated out of these chemicals?” Sam
proposed.
“It
can be and often is.” Dorp countered. “However, these chemicals
are often less stable than water, and the chemicals will evaporate
into the air before the water does. This means that these chemicals
poison the air shared by people, animals and plants. And if they
don’t evaporate, rainwater can wash them into the nearest river.
Not a good thing.”
To
make a long story short, Reader, there are a given number of gallons
of fresh water available per person per year. That number varies
according to where we live. Furthermore, it will change every year and will likely decrease as time goes on.
Dorp
looked up and said, “Look around. The day is beginning to wane, and
we are losing altitude.
We are going to condense and perhaps help
water some plant or creature here.”
“I
don’t see any ‘wane’ here, Mr. Doap. There are bawey any cwouds
in the sky.” Sam giggled.
“You
need to be a little more respectful, young man, or I just might wax
you a good one.”
“I
also don’t see much life here, Mr. Dorp.”
“That’s
how it looks to most humans. A desert keeps only the plant life and
animal life it can support. It’s interesting how animals get
drinking water in the desert. Some creatures carry their own water
collectors. The Namibian Beetle, Stenocara
gracilipes, lives in the
Namibian Desert in southwest Africa. It has a special shell that it
uses in early morning to collect water. It opens its wings toward
the winds when a very fine fog rolls in from the ocean. The fog
collects on his cool wings and rolls down a gutter on its shell and
goes into its mouth.
“Cool!
But if a fog rolls in from the ocean to the desert, how can it be a
desert?”
“Sam,
the Namibian Desert gets about .4 inches a year of measurable
precipitation, and the terrain is all sand. By scientific definition,
a desert is any geographical area that receives less than 10 inches
of measurable precipitation per year.
That’s just twice the water
most boys have in their bathtubs when their mothers make them bathe.
Understand?”
“Yessir.”
“Desert
peoples long ago learned to collect dew under stones and they also
trapped water with homemade devices.
We may be collected by one of
these devices, or we may pool in a low spot under a rock in the
morning to water a bug or lizard. We may water a plant or simply sit under a rock until the sand heats up in the morning and we
evaporate yet again.”
“How
many times have you evaporated and recondensed?”
Dorp
puzzled for a moment, “Oh my! I can’t begin to guess. Some dorps
in the Ogallala Aquifer haven’t evaporated in the last 3,000 years,
while other dorps may evaporate three or four times a week for
millennia.”
“Mil-who-nia?”
“Millennia,
Sam. That means thousands of years.”
“Oh.”
Dorp
and Sam hovered in the evening air. They lost many of their fellow
molecules in the last evaporation and hadn’t recollected their
size. The desert, because it has few clouds, is like a child that
goes to bed at night without a blanket.
The heat goes away, and it
gets cold at night. But this may be the reason that the desert gets
any moisture at all.
The cold air makes water vapors drift lower and
lower, and when they touch the rocks, sand and plants that have
cooled, they stick to them. This happened to Dorp and Sam early the
next morning.
They condensed
onto the sand near an Evening Primrose a few miles southwest of Moab,
Utah and percolated down into the ground. The flower was a very pale
yellow, and the root of the desert flower sucked up the water.
This
time, Dorp and Sam wound up in the petals of the flower. Sam wondered
aloud what would happen to them now. There was no horse around to eat
them. But a Bighorn Sheep was grazing its way toward them.
“Oh
no Mr. Dorp! Here we go again!”
Once
again, Sam and Dorp were in the mouth of a large creature that ate
plants. Bighorn sheep eat grasses, and other soft vegetation. They
will graze trees and shrubs if they need to. As they went through the
digestive tract, Sam wondered out loud how they would exit the
creature. Dorp told him to enjoy the ride rather than fret the
process. There was nothing he could do to make things worse or
better, and he couldn’t feel pain, smell or taste what was
happening, so what did it matter?
They
were absorbed into the bloodstream and then deposited in the sheep’s
mucus glands at the nostrils. There, they combined with sugars and
proteins to make mucus that most American humans call snot.
They were secreted into the left nostril of the Bighorn sheep.
Sam
pouted, “I’m disgusted! All my life, I’ve been taught to hate
snot, but now I am
snot. Yuck! And I’m snot sitting in the nose of a Bighorn sheep that has never had a bath! What good does it do to
evaporate and purify if I just get gross again?”
“First, Sam, you are serving a purpose. Now you are an organic air
filter. When dirty air comes in through an animal’s nose, much of
it makes contact with the curved walls of the nasal passages that are
lined with mucus, and a lot of the stuff is trapped. This keeps dirt,
insects and pollens from getting into the creature's sinuses and
lungs. What you called boogers,
is simply mucus filled with dirt and
has dried in your nose, which prompts you to blow your nose, and get
rid of the dirt. Nature’s reusable air filter. lever, no?”
Sam
moaned, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen… Wait. Gross! Why is
that fly coming up this far into the sheep’s nose?”
“Let’s
watch and see.”
The
fly, a female, began laying eggs in the mucus pockets of the sheep’s
nostril.
Other girl flies joined her, and did the same, and in both
nostrils.
(You never thought any female would be attracted to snot,
did you?)
Within a couple of days, the larvae hatched out of the eggs
and began to grow; each would reach the size of 100 eggs.
They ate
the mucus and the flesh in the nose of the sheep.
As the larvae grew,
the nasal passages became plugged. The Bighorn Sheep had trouble
breathing. One larvae consumed Dorp and Sam. One day, when coyotes
came after the bighorn, it couldn’t get enough oxygen to outrun its
attackers.
The desert coyotes dropped the sheep and began to tear
into its flesh.
“Well,
Mr. Dorp, here we are, smack in the middle of the food web again.
I wonder what kind of disgusting thing is next?”
“We’ll
see, won’t we, Sam?”
The
coyotes took from the sheep what they wanted and then went their
way. Smaller animals like birds and rats also picked at the bones.
With the skull being exposed, the nostrils were also open for the
little diners, and the critters began to devour the larvae. Dorp and
Sam’s larvae was swallowed by a pigeon, who then returned to its nest.
There were young birds, called fledglings,
in the nest.
Sam
said, “I’ve heard that birds eat stuff, and then come back to the
nest and vomit to feed their babies and then push them out of the
nest. Are we about to become bird puke tossed out of a tree?”
“No
Sam. While it’s true that many birds feed their young that way, but
they don’t push them out of the nest before they are able to fly.
My…someone has a flair for the dramatic.” (Dorp whispered to no
one in particular).
“But think about this. Those birds don’t
carry water to their young in the nest, just food. That means the
baby birds get their water from the food they eat. Additionally,
we may feed the babies indirectly, if we become crop milk. This is a substance that a few birds secrete from glands in their neck. Both mother and father pigeons feed their young this way."
The
larvae was digested. Sam and Dorp indeed became crop milk. They
were gobbled up by a little pigeon and were eventually transported to the bird’s
lungs. Before the little pigeon could learn to fly, they were
breathed out of its lungs and were on their way.
Sam
gave a sign of relief when they evaporated and said: “Well, we’ve
gone from being horse poop to being sheep snot to being crop milk and
then pigeon breath. Maybe next time we can…"
“Be
water on a toothbrush?” Dorp teased.
Sam
rolled his eyes and tried to leave Dorp, but surface
tension held him in place.
“Why
can’t I leave?”
“Even
if you could, you shouldn’t. You can’t get home without me,”
Dorp advised. We water molecules have a special bond. It’s called
cohesion.
This is what turns molecules into dorps and make us bead up on the
hood of your dad’s car when he washes it.
Sam
changed the subject: “I have a joke. A desert duck walks into an
old-west trading post and buys a soda. The store-keep says, ‘Cash
or check?’ The duck says ‘Neither. Put it on my bill.’”
It
was Dorp’s turn to sigh.
Photo: nps.gov
dorpwet.com
CHAPTER 3
4 ducks arrested leaving restaurant,on suspicion of ducking out on their bill.
joke photo: NDTV