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of Chernobyl! It's Supervole! The mutant rat from Russia! |
From the Files of Fortean Slips
by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
If you could conduct a survey of how comic book super-heroes got their amazing powers, you'd discover that the secret origin has undergone a pronounced generation gap. In the olden days, super-heroes got super by being rocketed from a doomed planet, or traumatized into psychosis by their parents' brutal murder... you know, humdrum stuff like that.
Then in the early '60s, some young upstarts established a new, more "realistic" wellspring of X-ray vision and nigh-invulnerability, brazenly building an empire on the wonders of prolonged exposure to radiation!
In the Marvel Universe, if you get bit by a radioactive spider, or toasted by gamma rays, or have parents who lived next door to a nuclear plant, congratulations! All you need is some skintight p.j.'s and a goofy name, and you're ready to fight crime! Skin lesions? Hair loss? Slow, painful debilitation and death from horrifying radiation sickness? Aw pshaw, True Believers! You got any idea how hard it would be to sell a funnybook called "The Incredible Tumor-Man"?
Well, after decades of miseducating geeky youngsters everywhere on the harsh realities of radioactivity, maybe Smilin' Stan Lee can have the last laugh. Scientists have discovered a life form that has not only withstood a heavily irradiated environment, but has actually become stronger as a result. Super-powered, you might even say.
Researchers examining the contaminated hell-pits surrounding the Chernobyl power plant disaster in the Ukraine were startled by the hardy survival of this species: not a bird, not a plane, but a vole. That's right, a vole--a sort of stocky, short-tailed rat.
With strange abilities far beyond those of mortal creatures, the supervoles have not suffered adverse genetic mutations that could kill them off or keep them from reproducing. And they didn't just get away with a suntan-level exposure, either. "These are the most contaminated animals I've seen anywhere," said Ron Chesser, a scientist at the University of Georgia. "They're living on radioactive materials."
I can just imagine these giant rats running around their nuclear paradise like Templeton at the county fair in "Charlotte's Web," pigging out on delicious glowing goo until they're too blissfully bloated to move.
Or maybe a comparison to another legendary cartoon rodent would be more appropriate. Cue the music, Andy:
Mr. Trouble never hangs around
When he hears this mighty sound:
"HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!"
That means that Mighty Vole is on the way!
If the Ukraine has a wrong to right,
Mighty Vole will join the fight!
On the sea or on the land,
He gets the radiation well in hand!
So though we're in danger,
We never despair:
'Cause we know that where there's fallout
He is there!
(He is there!)
(On the land!)
(On the sea!)
(In the air!)
We're not mutating at all--
We're just listening for his call:
"HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!"
That means that Mighty Vole is on the way!
(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.
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