Ooze
Never mind that the Leakey family found fossil evidence of Homo erectus dating back a mere few million years; the creature that Gerben threw down the hillside was possibly the 3.9 billion year-old original ancestor of all living organisms on Earth.
The creature had miraculously formed and come to life in an abandoned pond on Mount Washington. The pond sat on the property where Gerben and I were house sitting in the late 1960s. In addition to looking after the place we had agreed to clean out the small pond which had been ignored for many years.
It was a small 2 bedroom and 1 bath, 888 square foot, wood-frame house on a huge 8,500 square foot lot at 3231 Future Street, 90065. The house is still there but if you use Google Earth you can't see it as the property is completely blanketed by a canopy of tree tops. The house sits on the very back of the lot, 175 feet from the street. The house can't be seen from the street partly because of the foliage and partly because the lot slopes upward from the street at a 30 degree angle. It is as remote and secluded a residence as you can find in metropolitan Los Angeles.
The pond was situated about 50 feet below a narrow deck that was cantilevered off the front of the house. The pond sat at the base of a small grove of eucalyptus trees. The pond was rectangular in shape, the size of a grave but only 2 feet deep and lined with bricks. The owners had put in the pond and added lily pads inspired by The Book of Tea and a short run-in with Buddhism. After years of neglect the pond now held a 9-inch deep layer of fetid, black and green muck.
Gerben and I reluctantly walked down to the pond one morning armed with shovels and a garden hose. The first phase of our plan to salvage the pond was to scoop out the mess sitting at the bottom and toss it down the hill. We had just begun to make a dent in the noxious pungent gunk when something leapt across the pond. We both froze and gave each other a "What the hell was that?" look. Then it jumped again. While we were startled by the quickness of the movement we were more overcome with the unsettling idea that any creature could possibly live in this filth. The other terrifying notion that occurred to us was "Who's to say there's only one of them?" We stepped back from the edge of the pond and retreated back up to the house to mull things over.
I don't remember which of us came up with the gasoline tactic. I do remember we both thought in made perfect sense to incinerate the creature. In addition, a good blaze in that brick-lined hole might also dry up the disgusting goop and make the shoveling easier. We may have discussed what amount of gasoline would be needed but I can't recall. I also am unclear as to who exactly went to the gas station, returned and emptied a gallon can into the pond. It was early afternoon on a warm summer day when we tossed in a lit wad of newspaper.
After a surprisingly powerful WHOOMPH, I came to my senses and found myself laying flat on my back in the grass. I was never completely out cold, just stunned. Gerben had also been thrown on his back and lay beside me as we watched a Volkswagen-sized fireball slowly roll on up through the towering eucalyptus trees overhead, leaving a trail of billowing black smoke. Neither of us was injured although Gerben lost some of his eyebrows and eyelashes.
There were some tree branches that were charred and smoldering; and a few small limbs that still were aflame. We used the garden hose to douse everything that had been in the path of the fireball. The smoke had cleared and everything looked pretty normal by the time the police helicopter began circling the area.
The next day we returned to the pond to carry on with our cleanup chore. It turned out the creature had gone undisturbed by the explosion and it was still sloshing around in the pond. It was then that I informed Gerben that I was no longer a member of the team and left him to his own devices.
A day or so later, coming back from Cal State, I parked on the street, walked up to the house and noticed a large galvanized bucket sitting on the edge of the deck. I ignored it and went inside. Later that day Gerben showed up and asked me if I had checked out the bucket. I was clueless. Evidently, in some sort of Wild Kingdom of Omaha moment, Gerben had captured the pond creature and it was now thumping around inside the bucket of water on the deck. He dragged me out onto the deck to look at it. I wanted nothing to do with it and took only a brief glance. I do recall that it was a dark gray amorphous blob the size of a russet potato. It had no mouth, eyes, limbs or fins that I could see but had no trouble moving through the water and bumping into the sides of the bucket.
The pond had never had any thing other than a few plants put into it. There had never been any fish, frogs, turtles or any animal of any kind in the pond. Where had it come from? There have been reports of incidents where it has rained pollywogs – the most recent in Ishikawa, Japan in 2009. However, it was the middle of summer in Southern California, so rain of any type was out of the question.
I was sitting in the living room looking out through the French doors at Gerben on the deck as he pondered the bucket. Suddenly, I caught a glimmer of the potential significance represented by this creature. Could it be that this was the larval stage of the life cycle of an amphibian that had loomed up out of the primordial ooze that sat in the bottom of the pond; the same environment that covered areas of the Earth 3.9 billion years ago? Was this the biological evolutionary evidence that would support one of Darwin's claims? In The Origin of the Species, he had proposed the notion of common descent, a theory that held all living things descended from a single original species.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Gerben standing on the edge of the deck and flinging the contents of the bucket down the hillside. I went out onto the deck a little shaken by what I had seen. I asked, "What's the deal?"
Gerben said, "Good riddance, last night the damn thumping kept me awake."