lessons i have learnt from the golden mole
written for april's grizzly gazette carnival, hosted by oracle of sages the theme being "my favourite unconventional animal". mine is the golden mole.
these are six lessons ive learnt from the golden mole (he/him).
- everything is impermanent
the golden mole spends all his days digging beautiful tunnels, not through clay or rock but loose desert sand. the tunnels collapse as quick as he digs them, so why does he bother? because he knows the joy is in the act of digging itself.
- use natural hair oils
you dont need shampoo or conditioner to achieve a lovely lustre. you dont need to wash your hair at all. for a radiant sheen, all you have to do is keep gently scratching your scalp with your nails, thereby activating the grease glands. soon your will hair will be purely irridescent, the colour of light itself, like that of the beautiful golden mole.
- you dont need jewels
what do rubies, ambers, topazzes and moonstones have in common? two things. the first is jewels. the second is you dont need them. the golden mole is the worlds happiest creature. he knows nothing of jewels, in fact, he digs right through them. theres a lesson in that.
- bugs matter
most of the time, bugs dont exist. when they do exist, they exist as nuisance. thats the human perspective, but for the golden mole, bugs exist always and everywhere all the time. the golden mole lives for bugs, so therefore, no bugs, no mole.
- understand vibrations
when navigating the world, we rely on our eyes and ears and while these organs can be helpful, we tend to use them as a crutch, neglecting the development of our more delicate senses: touch, smell, taste, thinking, vibes and, vibrations.
we all know that golden mole is born without eyes or ears. instead he uses his bones to navigate, detecting vibrations of every mole, bug and worm in a 2km radius. can even sense the vibrations of birds in the sky.
our cognitive maps are like a sketchy route drawn on a piece of scrap paper, whereas the golden mole's is like a gps system with live-action tracking. we could live like this too if we just tuned into our bones.
- gone to be snakes now
in 2024, a group of south african linguists discovered that the lexical range of the golden mole is as vast and varied as the language of whales.
it is just that golden moles very rarely use their vocabularies, preferring to reserve their words for the realm of thinking. they are also asocial creatures, living their lives like truck drivers in the night, passing one another with little more than a flip of the paw or a short terse greeting over the sand-vibration intercom.
translating the utterances of golden moles into afrikaans, researchers found that the most common phrase spoken by moles was "gaan nou slange wees" which, in english, translates as "gone to be snakes now".
what does this mean?
from the other many snake related phrases, researchers found that the golden mole holds the snake in a sublime reverence, seeing them as both terrifying and godlike.
researchers at the university of animal theology also discovered that all golden moles believe that they will return as snakes after death. therefore, gone to be snakes now means "i'll soon be a snake", which for the golden mole, is a thing to look forward to.
there is also a threat implied by this greeting. "i shall soon be a snake, so dont cross me or i will hunt you down and kill you".
please note that i dont take this as a lesson to be learned from the golden mole. they can have their theology and i can have mine, but i do think the snake thing is a lesson worth learning about the golden mole.
there are so many lessons to be learned from, or at least about, every animal. i hope you have found some wisdom from my friends in the sand. thank you for reading.