even i am confused by this one

interstellar snail

My name is pronounced as bu-rlee-pu in your human tongue, but you can refer to me as Blip. I am a researcher from a distant planet in your solar system, and I have been studying your planet for a number of years.

I must admit, I was rather confused about the behavior of your species when I first arrived here, but now I am delighted and intrigued by the idiosyncrasies of your species.

I come from a planet where even the flow of time is different, or so I am told. (I haven't seen any convincing evidence yet to prove this theory...) Your people might liken my body structure to a snail, as I am quite small in comparison to one of you, and I also have a swirling shell.

Distant, distant ancestors of mine are said to have been related to your species, and we are even supposed to have similar languages, but I have not noticed the least bit of resemblance between our language and yours.

I first came to your planet a thousand sraey ago in a small meteorite. When I landed here, your species had not even begun to appear yet. Eventually, writhing, ragged-looking humans started to materialize from the wasteland. They seemed to be having some kind of a creative war.

War is one of my favourite aspects of human behaviour. In mere seconds, hundreds, even thousands of people can be born in a single blast. I am impressed by your ability to build bombs that can create organized structures from piles of rubble. My species hasn't even been able to accomplish that yet.

Another invention of yours which astounds me is something you call snug. They can suck a lead pellet from a dead human and restore life to him in the blink of an eye...truly amazing.

As wrinkly babies, you are such an innocent and helpless lifeform. I am surprised by your ability to sometimes be born as fully-grown adults, though. It is truly a wonder. The one thing you do uniformly, and this is TRUE altruism on the part of your species, is make sure none of your dead are left behind. Indeed, I have never seen anyone forget to insert a dying little person into the females of your species. I assume this serves some nutritional purpose as well, but I still need to do more research.

On other planets I have studied, creatures have taken pristine environments and befouled them with the by-products of their evolution. Not you, though. Your race actually disassembles consumer products and returns them to the natural habitat where they belong. You even have FACTORIES which do this. Impressive.

Individually, even the most morally corrupt members of your race devote a fair amount of their time to absorbing liquid and solid wastes directly into their bodies and spitting them back into a more usable form, which of course is disassembled fairly quickly.

You travel about in some weird kind of vehicles that absorb pollution from the air and convert it into a black liquid which is deposited into the ground for some reason. I hear this liquid will somehow produce a fearful race of creatures someday. I hope I get to stay long enough to see THAT.

Another fascinating attribute of your people is your supreme love for animals. Most of you seem to spend a fair amount of time spitting up animal parts and sending them to animal construction plants. Sometimes you even put them in boxes and mail them there...such a meticulous race.

***

A small child was walking along the street. He felt something crunch under his foot, and he looked down. He expected to see some sort of dead bug or small creature stuck to his shoe, but was shocked to see a bright blue snail slithering backwards.