The Mantis and Me

A Discourse on the Mono-eared

Gone deaf in one ear. Don't know if it's just bunged up with whatever bungs up ears (I've had a cold for a month), or if I've got stage 3 ear cancer, and I'll be dead soon. But I do know it's really inconvenient. Turns out two ears are better than one. More than twice as good, in fact. Hadn't quite absorbed how useful, er, binocular hearing was. I don't know where sounds come from any more. It’s like being in the house with an open window and the sound of a leaf blower or emergency vehicle or whatever comes in, and you can’t say if it’s from the left or the right.

I now see why evolution spurned the mono-ear. Strangely, I once knew a person who had one ear (because of Thalidomide). I used to carefully time offering to buy him a drink, waiting till he'd already got one, in the hope he'd say, 'It's OK, I've got one 'ear.' But he never did. I'd be more sensitive now, having developed empathy for the mono-eared. (I'm using ear drops to see if they help. No dramatic change after three days.)

Actually, having written this, I thought I’d better google around to see if there were in fact any mono-eared creatures. It turns out there is one. The praying mantis has a single ear, placed, er, between its legs. Now, were I able to chose the location of my mono-ear, I probably wouldn’t put it there, as the area is already quite cluttered. So where would I place my mono-ear? I think, aesthetic considerations aside, I’d put it on a fingertip, so I could direct it to stealthily overhear conversations. I could hire myself out to security agencies. Happy to take the highest bidder, if China or Russia are in the market for that type of biotechnology. The North Koreans? Not Mossad, though, because of the genocide.

The mantis uses its genito-mono-ear to detect the echolocational cries of bats. It doesn’t need to know the direction. It just hears the squeaks, thinks, ‘O Shit!’ and leaps away.