Reservation Gene

(Bacteria- Plural; Bacterium- Singular)

Why you bothered to grow at all?

Bacteria in a petri plate

Laughed at a bacterium

Growing alone in the periphery

Of the plate

He kept growing

Bacteria kept barking

Why are you growing in our plate?

When he didn’t reply

Bacteria tell to each other

No worries, we’ll quench all the nutrients

The media in this plate is only ours

Not of someone who just happened

To land in the plate by chance

Still growing? How come?

It must be his reservation gene

Otherwise how can he resist our

Toxins designed to kill invaders

On the second thought

If he has it, why shouldn’t we

Have that gene

We must protest

How can we see him

Growing peacefully in

The periphery

Of the petri plate

If we don’t do something

Investigator will pick him up

And throw rest of us

After 48 hours

We must overgrow

Investigator came to check on the plate

He couldn’t find a single colony

Seeing the overgrowth, he told to his students

“Plate is contaminated.

Throw it in autoclave for sterilization.”