The Natural History of the Mustache (Part II)

The seeds of the mustache’s downfall were sown by its very success. They were such proficient hunters, they would often kill far more than they needed, and rather than waste food, the mustaches gorged. As time went on, they grew increasingly fat, until most were as big as haystacks. Their excess pounds slowed them so much, they could barely hunt. No longer the swift and deadly creatures they once were, they now proved easy targets for the very predators that had once fled from them in mortal panic. Soon the plains were littered with the bodies of dead mustaches. Blood flowed in a million scarlet streams. It soaked into the earth, transforming the plains into a crimson landscape straight out of Hell. The mustache plunged toward extinction.

This was the mustache’s darkest hour. It was an hour that would last three million years. During this time, the mustache population was so small, it left no evidence that it even existed. No mustache fossil dating from this period has ever been found and, consequently, almost nothing is known about the mustache’s day-to-day life during these years. What did it eat? Where did it live? Did it interbreed with sideburns? The answers to these questions and to others like them are forever hidden behind a thick wall of impenetrable mystery.