World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

In truth, not too many people know about this striking bird.

But I wonder if it takes a zoo or aquarium for us to feel empathy toward a creature whose habitat is shrinking due to humans, toward a creature most have us have never seen or heard? Their “boom” vocalization registers at the lowest frequency of all known bird calls, below the limits of human hearing. But when they boom to each other in the densest forest, sanctuary keepers report that they can feel this rumble in their bones, even if they can’t hear it. We can’t hear cassowaries, but we can literally feel their presence, and with their arresting looks, they are one of those ancient birds with a sage look that seem to warn us they won’t always be around.

The simple fact is

this giant and strange and beautiful bird is a “keystone species,” meaning the Australian rainforests depend on it to maintain biodiversity. And they are dying because of humans.

The phrase “I can feel it in my bones” is synonymous with “I know it to be true.” What if the cassowary’s famous boom is also nature’s way of asking us to take a different kind of notice of them?

Suppose that boom shaking in our body can be a physical reminder that we are all connected—that if the cassowary population decreases, so does the proliferation of fruit trees, and with that, hundreds of animals and insects then become endangered.

Don’t you see? We are all connected. Boom

These butterflies and their offspring can still remember a mass they’ve never seen, sound waves breaking just so, and fly out of the way. How did they pass on this knowledge of the invisible?

Maybe that is the loneliest kind of memory: to be forever altered by an invisible kiss, a reminder of something long gone and crumbled, like that mountain in Lake Superior.

An invisible kiss is like that: the source of what you remember and what stays with you won’t come from a single script or scene, but perhaps from a previous haunting or the shock and surprise of remembering the first time you found purple quartz inside a geode.

But when I slid out the pieces into my palm, I couldn’t believe my luck—out came the tumble and the violet-rich sparkle of amethyst quartz—and suddenly I was transported back to ninth-grade

science class.

A few years ago in our home in Mississippi in the final gasps of summer, a beautiful lime-green chrysalis in the doorway of our front porch that my family had been eagerly watching did not open. My husband and I had never heard of this happening, so we did what we always do when parenthood confounds us: we decided to wait and see.

On more than one occasion I found my youngest squatting down, talking to it, cheering it on, like the monarch was in some kind of race: C’mon, you can do it! Don’t you want to be born, little butterfly? We have lots of milkweed to nibble!

In preschool, my eldest loved them so much, he’d beg me to play videos on YouTube in which butterflies emerge from their chrysalises, and he memorized the stoic narration of their elaborate hatching process verbatim. The one and only time he has ever gotten in trouble at school, in the entirety of his tender twelve years, was when a classmate told him that only girls could like butterflies.

What I mean is: the monarch butterfly means so much to our whole family. Every house we’ve lived in as a married couple has had plenty of milkweed and other butterfly attractors.

The chrysalis never hatched. One night I heard my youngest include its contents in his evening prayer, but then he never mentioned it again. My husband eventually disposed of it while the boys were at school and neither of them asked where it went, though I know they noticed it was gone. They seemed to understand what my husband and I had known for quite some time: even wings can’t guarantee a smooth flight.

Books, books! Your father tells me you are reading too many books. No more reading at night. No more reading. You want thick glasses like me? No books in the bedroom. You play outside.

Contracts for my mom’s job back then would last four years or so, which always meant another move right when we started to feel settled.

This bulbous shield looks much like the soap-bubble canopy of a helicopter—the glass so wide and round—for great views, say, over and into the Grand Canyon. My mother always scared us about these helicopters, and, when I told her I hoped to ride in one before we left Arizona, made me promise over the phone never to do it.

Eyes of the barrelfish look up, always scanning the dark ocean-night like they’re searching the sky for the occasional star, the way I did after a day of roller-skating, in a rink as dark as the sea—save for the dazzle of a mirrored ball in the center.

Feeding on jellyfish and the occasional stolen catches from a siphonophore—a skinny invertebrate longer than a blue whale—the barreleye hovers, or station-keeps, at about five inches long.

Gosh, how my mom cried when my dad told her I needed glasses. She reads too much, too much! I heard her say when I eavesdropped on them from the kitchen phone. What can I do? She always wants to go to the library!

Head membrane of the barreleye fish forms a transparent dome of skin over its chartreuse eyes. Inside this dome, a barreleye’s globular eyes can rotate like binoculars and move to better spy prey directly above them. A clear dome like this acts like a shield to protect the barreleye’s eyes from the stinging zap of a jellyfish or a siphonophore.

Why aren’t you in line? I asked. We’re all going to _________’s house, my classmate replied. Her mom is picking us up and taking us to see Top Gun. Oh, I said. That’s right—I forgot that was today. I already had plans. What, the others wanted to know. I don’t know—but it’s big. My dad said it was a big surprise, I lied.

(Just so you know, I honestly don’t remember the name of that girl who invited every girl in our sixth-grade homeroom to the movies except me. If I could remember, I would definitely name her. Was it you?

There were no special plans that night, and I simmered about my exclusion that afternoon. These were girls who had been some of my best friends just a year before—but suddenly they were all boy crazy, and I … wasn’t. But I was eleven. My sister was my best pal, and she wanted to float in the pool with me and look up at all the stars. We floated under a radiance of constellations. How could I be salty for long? Maybe my dad would join us and pretend he was a shark or a manta ray. The water was the same color as barreleye fish eyes: electric teal. Once more, I felt so rich because I had my sister, my dad, a now-healthy mom, and a pool to swim in before bedtime.

Loudly some neighborhood kids would sometimes call out, Google-eyes! Hey, Google-eyes! Where’d you get your goggles? while I roller-skated at the park.

When my circle of friends recreated scenes from Star Wars in our cul-de-sac, I always called dibs on playing Darth Vader. I could be scary if I wanted to. So that quieted their jeers—for a while, at least.

My dad said we could rent Top Gun as soon as it came out. Usually it took years for a movie to make it to VHS, but Top Gun changed all that. It was the first movie to come out on video the same year it was released in theatres.