PROSE POETRY

Tardigrade AKA the Water Bear

A response to Trisha Traughber’s “mystery” prompt

Tardigrade, also known as the water bear for their looks and the thin layer of water surrounding their body, or moss piglet after their preferred mossy environment.

A tiny, mighty, indestructible creature who were here millions of years before the dinosaurs and will be here millions of years after us.

One hundred degree mud volcanoes nor the iciness of space will kill this tiny creature of might found in tropical rainforests and in the antarctic which can roll into a ball and suspend its animation for up to thirty years.

Not adapted to the extremes, however, they are able to endure, a “bioglass” holds together their damage suppressing protein protecting their DNA making them the toughest of all known creatures,

Found on mountain tops and deep seas, extreme pressures, air deprivation, starvation, dehydration and radiation bother not this resilient creature. Inhabiting developing environments attracting other invertebrates and predators playing an important part as Eco pioneers.

Cosmopolitan in their habitat, you will find them anywhere and everywhere developing survival characteristics, the survivors of five mass extinctions on this planet Earth.

Maybe they crossed space and time from other worlds? Now there’s a mystery for me to contemplate the ultimate vagabond…

Thank you Trisha Traughber for this “Mystery” prompt. Read Trishas’s prompt here with her wonderful poem…

Thank you Trisha Traughber for giving my words a platform here at Vagabond voices. Thank you all for reading and your precious time. Always. J. 🙏