...Earthling...

“He   saved  the planet.”

It is a phrase I’d like to see 

carved into my tombstone. 

But at my age, and 

with time running out,

the chances that something

massively catastrophic 

   of a celestial nature

transpiring upon my watch is 

   pretty much next to nil.

But if it did…

If by chance some pending doom loomed

at precisely 2:22 tomorrow afternoon,

do I have the skill-set 

to actually save the world?

Would I have had the precise 

doohickey gizmo thing-a-majiggy 

there in my skin-tight leotard

that’s required to counter-tweak 

   the nipple of    annihilation?

Do I?

Does my wee noggin possess 

   sufficient intel-quotient

to ponder potentially precipitous

pedantic equations such as      say…

E=mc…    um…

E=mc…   Damn !

I told you I was the 

wrong guy for the job.

Squared!  For as with any 

circular shaped apocalypse;

you need a squared peg hero in that 

   deep   rabbit    hole.

Ah, the connection 

between rabbits and

total world      annihilation?

Well if you knew your 

intergalactic space history,

you would be aware 

that the greatest threat

we Earthlings    

ever encountered

came from the 

dark sinister hands of

‘Commander X-2’.

What?    

No drop to your knees in a 

catatonic spasm of abject terror?

Surely you know the name.

Surely you are aware that

there have been moments in 

the space-time continuum when 

   earth blocked the view

   of Venus   as seen from Mars.

Surely you’re aware of the

‘Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator’.

Seriously    sinister stuff     indeed.

Commander X-2 zipped around upon

an ominous spaceship nicknamed

   ‘The Martian Maggot’.

And he could fry your brain 

at a moment’s notice

with a disintegrator gun  

cuz this dude was prone 

to getting a  tad  angry.

Very, very tad angry.

And so yes, he had this heinous plot.

In the name of

greater interplanetary vista,

he would vaporize our beloved earth.

And just who was it that

stepped in at the last second

to avert total world obliteration?

NASA?     No.

The United Nations?     No.

The Uncanny X-Men?      No.

Other comic book characters such as

the Fantastic Four,

   Batman & Robin,

Johnny Quest or

    George W. Bush?

Come on now. 

Let’s stay serious.

It was of course  a rabbit.

Commander X-2,

aka ‘Marvin The Martian’

brought to his knees by 

some aerial eared bunny

   with the first name of ‘Bugs’.

And the year the world 

almost came to end?   

1948.   Oh and on a

get-high-note, that is also

the first year it was documented

that an Earthling,  aka   ‘Bugs Bunny’,

traveled into space and

encountered the most extraterrestrial 

   Commander X-2.

Well yes, Commander X-2

and his faithful companion “K-9”.

“K…9”       Canine.

Yep, his little Martian buddy 

was a dog.

1948 and you had mice in the moon,

   cows over the moon,

rabbits in space

   and dogs on Mars.

Correction.

I have just been informed 

that in actuality

these were all

nothing more than cartoons, 

fairy tales  and ex-presidents 

so     they don’t   really  count.

The first trueEarthling in outer space?

November third, 1957,

a female Soviet Cosmonaut 

by the name of   ‘Laika’.

She was a bitch.     A canine.

Yes, a small stray mongrel dog who 

  we officially came to know of    as  ‘Laika’

  but that was in truth not her real name.

No, the name she answered to was ‘Kudryavka’.

‘Kudryavka’:  ‘Little  Curly-Haired One’.

Four days after the Soviets 

launched her into space,

the thermal control system malfunctioned 

and the little curly-haired one 

died of heat-stress exhaustion.

And there in 1958, 

the Sputnik 2 carrying Laika

fell back to the Earth 

and burnt up 

upon re-entry.

She: the first Earthling to 

light up our dark night’s sky.

And there the following morning

those few extra particles 

of atmospheric dust

brought the slightest 

nuance of color

to an otherwise 

ordinary sunrise.

Laika.   

Did her sacrifice save the planet?

Future historians will 

likely offer arguments 

that she did,

and yet what was proven but

just how shallow the well 

of our bleak human compassion?

No, instead of the 

Earthling named Laika,

I find myself dwelling on 

the    other dog.

The one named ‘Kudryavka’.

The one who licked the hand

   of he who strapped her 

       into the capsule’s harness.

‘Kudryavka’.

Little   Curly-Haired One. 

Little starry-eyed one. 

As they looked through the hatch

upon its moment of closing, did 

anyone notice 

the wag of your tail?

©09 Jack Hubbell