‘I Wouldn’t Wish a Whale Skeleton On Anyone’

‘You can’t leave them here!’

Pyenson, with a small jump, turned towards the noise and saw the silhouette of a man, but he couldn’t see who it was as the sun was in his eyes. Raising his arm and using it for its unintended purpose he blocked out the sun revealing a police officer standing on the ridge of the excavation site.

‘Pardon?’ was all he could think to respond.

‘All this junk,’ said the officer waving his hand over the maze of bones and tools, ‘it can’t stay here.’

Pyenson looked over the junk the officer was referring to. The site was possibly the most exciting paleontological find in the last decade. In this hundred squared metres alone there were fossils of an aquatic sloth, and a sperm whale, along with a myriad of other long lost remains and an entirely undiscovered species; a walrus whale. And that was only the area Pyenson and his team had excavated properly. He daren’t dream of the possibilities still enclosed below the earth. He decided to voice some of his passion in a hope that the officer might understand.

‘This junk is possibly the most extravagant discovery of my career, and…and not just that, but possibly the last decade entirely. The mass of bones we are discovering suggests this could be, could have been, some kind of natural death trap. The value of such a find I can’t even begin to…’

‘Listen, guy,’ interrupted the officer, ‘that might very well be true but their lyin in the way of the highway. Stoppin construction. This highway needs to be built asap. And it has all its permits and everythin. Your bones don’t have any paperwork, the highway has been planned for years now.’

‘These fossils have been here for nine-million years,’ replied Pyenson exasperated. It didn’t take much for Pyenson to become agitated when dealing with living things. He was definitely more inclined to the company of the post-living than the currently moving. There was just too much unexpected problems when people still had control of their own bodies. He definitely felt like the fossils had a more legitimate claim to the contended space than the millions of people who would be using the new road. People are just so …alive, thought Pyenson. They never stay still do they? They ought to learn some patience. He reached out unconsciously to touch the massive rib bone in front of him. The sheer magnitude of time that this, and any other, carcass had spent here calmed him. The stoic way in which it accepted its mortal situation, just slowly decaying and waiting an eternity to be found, without protest, somehow spoke to his own passive nature. Even digging in search of these alien wonders, regardless of results, had always been therapeutic to him; an escape from the constant expectations of reality into a monotonous task which demanded nothing of him. The calm which he had achieved in his last bout of meditative labour was being corroded, much like the fossils he adored, by this stubborn official.

‘Nine-million years,’ he repeated.

‘Well then, I think their turn is over’, chuckled the officer, oblivious to the disdain he was receiving.

Pyenson noticed that he was rocking back-and-forth on the balls of his feet, like a human rocking chair. Rocking chairs were Pyenson’s least favourite type of chair. In his opinion a chair was designed almost specifically to keep still and it was further evidence that mankind was unable to just stop. Needless to say, this kinetic constable was not endearing himself to Pyenson. He decided to attempt another tactic.

‘How am I even meant to move these?’ he said gesturing to the expanse of bones behind him. ‘They must weigh a combined twenty tonnes.’

‘Really? That much, wow! Well, how about a trailer?’ he suggested majestically.

A trailer, thought Pyenson, that’s ridiculous.

‘A trailer,’ said Pyenson, ‘that’s ridiculous. The whale’s jaw bone alone wouldn’t even fit in a trailer. Not to mention that these are all extremely fragile and incredibly valuable. I can’t just drive down the road with such precious antiquities trundling behind me in a trailer.’

The officer took a while to respond, and was clearly deep in thought as he was scratching various parts of his head, something Pyenson noticed and detested.

‘Two trailers?’

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And so it was that Pyenson found himself riding in a convoy of twenty trailers, alongside the nine-million year old remains of a sperm whale, a walrus whale and an aquatic sloth.