Israhel van Meckenem the Younger:
Wild Men Climbing to the Flower of Love (15th-16th century)

"What harm could it possibly do to learn that Tarzan's on the move again?"

Somewhere within every Tarzan movie ever made, some group would go on the move. Background jungle sounds would increase, but not so much that any non-native would notice. Every inhabitant seemed to get involved. Elephants would trumpet and monkeys chatter, lions would roar, and alligators splatter. The purpose of the commotion would be a form of primitive communication that seemed to transcend language, for every animal: human, hippo, and reptile, seemed perfectly capable of passing on the message, which would remain deeply encoded. Tarzan, of course, having been raised in the jungle, was perfectly conversant, so he could translate. He knew, for instance, when the bad guys began their inevitably failing pursuit because his animal allies would keep him informed. When he’d swing off on his conveniently separated vine highway, word would spread so his passage wouldn’t surprise anybody but the bad guys.

Our social media serves as our JungleTelegraph today. It involves ten thousand and more voices, each with its unique perspective, though the canny native can more or less successfully decode each, even though many won’t have much in the way of identifying markings. Scrolling to gather additional information about this weekend’s massive winter storm, I encountered dozens of StormTracker presentations, each claiming to be the best source for up-to-date information, though none of them came date or time-stamped, except for a note disclosing how long ago they were posted. They might have been created days before, but the moment posted starts a counter that serves as the only hint as to when they might have then been current.

The source is rarely mentioned, though I learn from experience which one originates in the Blue Ridge and which in Texas. Each carries more or less the same warnings, only slightly adjusted for local conditions. Some warn of dangerous ice while others focus on wind chills. I learn that it’s universal that nobody really knows how to drive in blizzards. The best advice usually amounts to ‘stay home’ and ‘don’t drag your bar-be-que rig indoors, no matter how cold it gets inside after you lose electricity.’ Everybody will seemingly lose electricity. Most broadcasts include the obligatory shots of the empty shelves at some hapless Walmart. Some show heavy machinery loading salt onto the back of plows. Each invariably includes a multi-color weather map showing the differing kinds of precipitation expected.

I cannot get enough of this stuff. My desire for the latest information knows no limit, even though I’m one of the few who will not be touched by this history-making confrontation between primitive forces and what passes for civilization. I miss the drama of it, that sense that I managed to get ahead of it for once. The self-satisfaction from knowing that I snagged two bags of ice melt before the hordes descended. My deep larder always left me feeling smug then, pitying those poor souls who relied upon store-bought, freezer aisle fare. I was always unquenchable then, even when all I had was the near-constant blather of a single local television weatherman. I’d sit rapt before the television, as if absorbing absolution, preparing myself for a catastrophe that would very likely manage to miss me again. I’d step out every hour or so to scrape off the accumulated snow so that I wouldn’t be left with some two-foot drift to plow through. I’d always feel on top of the world when snowed in.

A very large part of the attraction scrolling feeds into for me must be this apparently innate need for even vacuous information in the face of some budding potential catastrophe. Most of the data doesn’t really concern me, yet I consume it hungrily, as if I couldn’t possibly be satiated by it. And perhaps I can’t be. This might be a large part of the attraction. Maybe I just marvel at the contraption, where hippos and alligators join the spoonbills and monkeys to pass on what might prove to be critical information. It soothes something inside of me to sense that I’m a part of something as rich and mysterious as a JungleTelegraph. What harm could it possibly do to learn that Tarzan’s on the move again?

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz