August 19, 2005
Fern
With the light and all, our glassed-in dogtrot entryway (aka The Narthex) is a good place for plants. Among other contenders, there’re three ferns — a Dallas, an African, and a Korean called Suzy Wong. The Dallas must be the earliest because it always gets the worm.
Thanks to her long, experienced years of gardeneering, CP can outsmart worms. A little black one had set about systematically dismantling Dallas the other day when she spied it and dispatched it. It had made the mistake of crawling in plain sight on top of a frond and even still had a chomp of green in its mouth.
Intelligent Design (aka ID), however, must move fast, for the next day one of the worm’s colleagues crawled out of sight underneath a frond. It was even tidier with its table manners, but it had not been designed well enough to contend with herself.
Ferns — and worms — have been around a long time. In my geologist days, I’d occasionally find a fossil fern, fronds so delicately preserved in 400 million year-old Devonian shales that only the color had disappeared. They make nice markers to keep one from getting lost in the geologic column.
I don’t know what ID says, but the Creationism guys say God puts stuff like this around just to trick us into not believing with old Bishop James Ussher that the world was only 6001 years old last January. I’d just as soon we don’t teach this in the public schools, but I suppose it’s okay so long as Albert Einstein’s assurance that God doesn’t play dice gets equal time.