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Animals of the Profound
Week six came. This week was for once something that was not ape-like. This time the topic was monsters of the deep, or as Ken called them: animals of the profound.
"Even if Peking Man helps solve the conundrum of man-like animals, there will still be disputed inquiries about an ample change of added likely ancient predators. For example, in the celebrated heights of Scotland lies a long, strait cut of bottomless H2O. A deep loch with raised strands stand fifty feet above sea level, this body of water rests at the border of Invermoristan Forest. Blanched bleached exoskeletons litter the raised strands, antiques of prehistory when it was once an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, back before the Ice Age covered Scotland with a two-mile deep blanket of ice. When the ice defrosted, the runoff filled the loch and the land surrounding it rose, cutting it off from the deep, creating one of the most distinctive meres on Earth. The big, land-locked loch is like practically no other body of H2O known to humanity. Twenty-four miles long by one mile wide, it has no atolls. Its walls ascend straight down. Its bottom, unnaturally flat, is seven hundred feet deep, deeper even than the average depth of the North Sea. It holds an extraordinary amount of water. It also holds clues to one of the most absorbing alleged immersed animals in contemporary yesteryear, the Earth's most aired and arguable deep animal: the Loch Ness Monster, known affectionately to millions since 1933 as 'Nessie.' Loch Ness was once filled with saltwater, back when it was part of the deep, but time and nature changed all that when bourns dumped miles and miles of slit into the loch over the hundreds of years that followed the Ice Age and blocked the seaward end, making it a self-contained mere. The original seawater was gradually changed to freshwater, but the change took place so slowly that pelagic animals which had been trapped by the slit barricade had many generations to adapt themselves. 'Nessie', if she exists, is probably a seed of one of those deep animals, gradually evolving from an ocean going denizen to a more dormant land-locked freshwater burgher of the mere. She may have been around for a long time. Isolated accounts have cropped up for hundreds of years from Scots who passed through the area about 'some turr-ible monster' flailing in the mere. Then in 1933, something new happened, and the Earth sat up and began to pay closer attention to Nessie. Until that twelvemonth, the only route to the loch was an old avenue along the southern shore, built after the Jacobian Rising in 1715 in order to open up the cutoff, insurrectionary heights. The avenue ran mainly through the eminences and even when it touched the strand it did not offer much of a view, thanks to a dense blooming of trees and brier. But in the early thirties, work began on a new avenue along the north strand. The shrubbery was cleared away and the dynamite blasting began, to clear away the boulders and make room for the avenue companies. Some say the noise of the blasting woke up Nessie and brought her to the surface to see what was happening. There may have been a number of sightings in those early days of the thirties, but the first to be widely reported by the news media took place from the new avenue on April 14, 1933. The bystanders were an accommodations freeholder—"
Down in the kitchen, Rick Finlayson sat at the table beating Mort Weinerman and Cerdic Warburton at cards. How they were losing to a blind man was beyond them.
"It is a fine day when we all visit on the same day." Observed Cerdic.
"Finer for me." Stated Rick. "I haven't won a game of cards since 2008!"
Mort could only stare at Rick. He just had to ask what was on his mind. "Just how are we—"
"What is is, Mort." Replied Rick. "What is is."
"What does that even mean?" asked Cerdic.
"I can't remember." Stated Rick. "All I do remember is that it is something that Ernest Hemmingway said to me. I am in my seventies after all and I have been present for things that Ken can't even imagine."
"Then maybe you should be the host." Said Heidi as she walked into the kitchen.
"Me hosting a web-series?" asked Rick as he beat Mort and Cerdic, causing Cerdic to hang his head and Mort to bring a palm to his face. "Heidi, I can't imagine myself as the host of anything but a dinner party. Besides, web-series are for people far younger than me. No one would want to watch an old man who looks like Bogart and sounds like Grant."