What do you think about when you hear the word Lemming? To many people, images spring to mind of long, sleek, otter-like creatures, diving off a high Arctic cliff in mass suicide. Other, more informed individuals will think of mass migrations, of billions upon billions of small furry rodents marching through the countryside, devastating every living thing in their paths. Finally these noble and ecologically conscious creatures fling themselves into the sea in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.
Guess what folks? Lemmings don't commit suicide. That's right. And there's no Santa Claus, and Championship Wrestling is choreographed, and Bill Clinton is NOT a goddamn liberal. Sorry to break the mystique, but wouldn't you all rather know the truth than live in illusion?
I don't know where the suicide myth began. It certainly didn't originate in the northern climes where the lemming resides. The northeners have plenty of myths, but they don't make the mistake of attributing to a small rodent the ability to make a complex intellectual decision like self-termination. Perhaps, like a lot of the disease in our society, it originated with Disney.
Lemmings do overpopulate. They do migrate, and they die in mass but not on purpose. And guess what else? They die alone. A lot of the lemming mystique concerns the perception that lemmings have some mass consciousness that propels them in their migrations. I'm sorry, really I am, but Rosebud is a sled, and though many lemmings might live and die in the same location, they do not appear to be social creatures. They don't move as a cohesive unit. Rather, they move much as humans move down the freeway in their cars: each in his own world. Keeping with that analogy, they migrate for much the same reasons that masses of humans migrate around America's cities daily: in search of food.
So why The New Lemming? Could it be because this small rodent is one of the most successful of all the Arctic species? Could it be because you just can't keep the lemming down? Could it be because lemmings know how to survive the Arctic winter without hibernating. Maybe it's just because Lemmings love to eat caribou fat.
In truth it's all of these things and more. For we are the NEW lemming. The debunked and fully understood lemming. The twenty first century lemming. We sit in our burrows all winter surfing the lemming-net on computers specially adapted to our lemming eyes, typing away on special keyboards...
More than any other thing, it's because we love these industrious and adaptable little animals. We love the single- minded way in which they pursue their purpose. You cannot stop a lemming. Just can't do it. If you try, he'll bite you. Hard.
So welcome to this, the prototype issue of our paper. Come into our burrow, puff up your fur, take a mouthful of winter foliage, and oh yes. Caribou fat's in the fridge.