Tundra+Fiction

Brooke B. And Jack B.

Rudolf the Red-Nosed Scientist Everyone’s heard the story of Rudolf. They’ve heard Santa’s, happy Disney-like version, but no one’s heard the truth. How do I know so much? I’m the REAL Rudolf, and let me tell you, being famous for having a shiny red nose isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

When I was born, I lived in, well the not-so-nice portion of the alpine tundra. It was like living in the ghetto, for reindeer. The worst was witnessing bad symbiotic relationships! All of them consisted of predator-prey, parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism.

My first encounter with symbiotic relationships when I first fetched water alone, my mother sent me because it was very dark and my red nose could lead the way. I was at the bank of the Yukon River. I was just getting ready to leave, when an injured fish mustered all ﻿ of its strength to jump up and ask for me to save him; he had an arctic lamprey sucking the life out of him! It was a glimpse of parasitism, which is when one organism, in this case the lamprey, is helped and the other, the trout, is harmed. In the end I couldn’t help him.

My next symbiotic relationship experience was with a very close friend of mine, Thumpa the rabbit. She too grew up in the ghetto of the alpine tundra. When a gang of fierce snowy owls approached, we hid. I never realized until then, when Thumpa hid in a near-by shrub it was an example of commensalism. It’s commensalism because being hidden by the branches helped Thumpa, and it didn’t help or harm the shrub by hiding her from the owls. By now I had moved out of the alpine-ghetto, to a much nicer environment called the arctic tundra, farther north than my previous home. This is where I witnessed mutualism, which is by far the best relationship to witness. Mutualism is when both organisms benefit, like when a moth pollinates a flower. My bright red nose attracted many things, but this was the first time anything had actually landed on it. A northern dart moth got confused and thought my nose was a flower. I kindly asked her to leave my nose and land on an actual flower. She blushed and flew to a nearby arctic poppy. She landed and drank the nectar, and without knowing picked up pollen that was on the poppy, which helped pollinate the next flower she landed on. This continuous cycle helps both the moth and the flower, so it is mutualism. The final relationship I will tell you about includes my personal story. I was watching the northern lights when, out of nowhere, a polar bear started chasing me! They may be big fellows, but they can sure move fast! I was sure this predator-prey situation was going to end with a happy predator and a bitter end for the prey, when they saved me! A team of Santa’s reindeer came down from the sky while performing a practice run. They saw my nose and knew I needed help. They picked me up, and we flew far away from that polar bear and farther and farther until we reached the north pole.

Ever since, I’ve become famous for everyone teasing me, but really, we were all friends and I didn’t lead his sleigh. I studied symbiotic relationships. It helped me learn whom reindeer could trust, who would help us in mutualism, who wouldn’t care in commensalism, and who would try and harm us like parasitism and predator-prey.

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