The Bravest Little Millipede

I decided to share my fascination of fossils and a few samples of my collection in a nontraditional style. I have written a short story that includes the names and some of the characteristics of my fossils along with the climate of the time period. As I wrote the story with the purpose to inform and inspire, it transpired into something more meaningful that everyone can determine for themselves. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it! By the way, I don't have a millipede fossil as part of my collection, they are quite rare. I wish I did as there is evidence they truly were the first creatures to crawl out of the swamps onto land.

There once was a little millipede, the bravest of all millipedes. He lived during an amazing era on Earth, best known for its explosion of life. I’m referring to the Devonian time period which was so full of new life that it has been called the Age of Fish, Age of Forests, Age of Vertebrates and Age of Amphibians to name a few. It all began, if you can grasp, just over 400 million years ago. Nevertheless, there is much we can learn from the bravest little millipede.

One day, he decided he was fed up with attacks imposed upon his species by the many sea monsters in his sight. To you and me they would be fascinating creatures to simply observe. To him, because of his meager size, they were all beasts. His plight would be the sadness he felt when he was helpless to only scamper under the sandy sea floor with the use of his multiple legs, while his millimates succumbed to their enemies. The most frightening threat came from the clamping claws of the eurypterid sea scorpions with their enormous size and ill-tempered spirits. In his mind it was a cruel twist of nature to be betrayed by cousin arthropods.

Almost as horrible to him and his kind were the arthropod trilobites. Most of them were gentle creatures, but a few of their species had adapted predator skills like that of a raptor bird, with speed and sharp vision. The millipedes were regular prey for those types. All ocean beings even referred to them as the lens-faces, because their eyes possessed multiple lenses and they could see with amazing surround vision. Whenever a prowling trilobite spied an unsuspecting harmless millipede with his keen eyesight, it seldom had ample quickness to escape. The millipedes were sea floor dwellers which fed on decaying matter; they were close to the bottom of the food chain and never a threat to other creatures. Many of the trilobites occupied the same ocean parallel and posed a regular hazard to them.

Yet another, more random hazard came from the cephalopods with their powerful tentacles and big brains. First, there existed the orthoceras cephalopods featuring especially long straight shells. Using their muscular tentacles, they could pluck anything out from the water world with precise accuracy and crush the hardest of shells. Nothing was safe from them so long as it was within their grasp. When their cousin ammonites adapted a coiled shell similar to that of a ram’s horn, only forming a solid disk, they eventually came to dominate the seas over their close relative orthoceras. From the little millipede’s perspective, they were a nasty sort, but from a human observation, their fossil shells possess inner chambers of beautiful patterns and are even worn as jewelry with symbolic meaning.

All the little millipede ever wanted to do was to carry out his role in the ancient marine ecosystem alongside his millimates and keep the ocean floor clean. With the arrival of more and more newcomer ocean organisms bursting with yet more new ocean life, he felt his kind would soon be extinguished. Now of all these animals he viewed as terrible nuisances, every one of them was an invertebrate creature, like himself, that lacked a back bone. He had never known of anything else until the day the vertebrates appeared. The vertebrates were swift and agile, but worst of all, they were hungry for millipedes. Arriving first were the ostracoderm fish with sleek, slippery bodies possessing heavy armored plates layered over their upper torsos. Then the magnificent placoderms evolved thereafter. They wore pretty patterned plates and a wide variation of lavish fins and spikes for added protection. Not only were they a marvel of nature, they were awesome predators as well. Unlike the ostracoderms, they had adapted jawbones and blades for teeth, some of impressive size. Dunkleoteus was the T-Rex placoderm of the Devonian seas which had the ability to chomp down on any living creature in its time!

The little millipede was beside himself and searched deep inside his soul for a solution to his problem. He consulted with his millimates one by one. He arranged for a millisummit to convene a meeting of the milliminds. They brainstormed and discussed and debated for hours on end until finally they all agreed on a split decision. The majority of the million millipedes would remain in the ocean trenches and protect one another by using the millibuddy system and live in pairs. That was the beginning of millimarriages. The bravest little millipede was to lead a group out from the ocean waters and become the first creatures to ever explore land. Such a prospect was unheard of, but the bravest little millipede was no ordinary creature and instinctively his followers believed in him.

The day finally arrived for them to venture out from their familiar water world. The wise little millipede chose a location on the shore of a cool calm lagoon which passed beyond the breakwater of the Rheic Ocean, bordering the great continent of Gondwana. The bravest little millipede was first to pop out of the water and gaze his eyes upon the Devonian landscape. He took in his first breath of air, adapting the use of his special tube openings. The air was untarnished and crisp, with an aroma of prolific leaves mixed with a marvelous scent of decaying organic material. It wet his appetite briefly until his eyes were steered higher and higher along the trunk of an Archeopteris tree. Through the treetop canopy he witnessed a light more powerful and brighter than he ever knew possible. He was captured momentarily by the shimmering streaks of light filtering through the branches.

He suddenly snapped out of his daze and focused on his mission to crawl out of the water and onto the shore. He proceeded to lead the millitroops first steps onto dry land. To their surprise the ground was quite moist from the hothouse climate which recycled warm moist air on a continual basis and dripped it back to Earth. None of the millitroops knew quite what to expect from their new habitat. They all scurried into the underbrush for protection, all but the bravest one. He had set his sights up above, fascinated by the giant trees, some of which reached thirty meters into the sky. Archeopteris dominated the forest and provided shade that protected the pioneer millipedes from the heat and intense ultraviolet rays of the sun. Other midsize trees such as Medullosa and Psaronius sealed the shady environment and ancient lycopod trees hovered near water's edge. Because there was a first forest thick with frond trees, wispy shrubs, spreading mosses, ferns and spiny herbaceous plants, there was plenty of decaying nourishment for all the millipedes to eat and eat and eat. The bravest little millipede did just that and grew healthy and happy.

Finally one day he looked up again to the light shining through the trees and sought to know where it came from. He decided to crawl up the strong bumpy trunk of Archeopteris to get closer to the light. Inch my inch he crept, gripping the coarse wood with his one hundred legs. When he reached the top he never felt so alive. The sky was the color of love; the source of the light made his heart beat with trepidation and the forest canopy reflected the color of his soul that reached as far as his view allowed. He was glad he made the strenous crawl up the giant tree and came to understand its lure.

Days past, weeks and months; life was good for him and his millimates. There was plenty of oxygen in the air, plenty of nourishment on the ground and the absence of predators was the bonus he had longed for. Everyday of his life he climbed the giant Archeopteris tree to thank the powers that be. What began as the bravest little millipede’s original contemplations, turned into words that transformed into action which ultimately created a new life for him and his kind! Ironically, of all the creatures that threatened his species very existence, his has survived the longest!