No, this isn't a make-believe place. It's real. They call it
"Ball's Pyramid." It's what's left of an old volcano that
emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval
officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It
sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely
narrow, 1,844 feet high, and it sits alone. What's more, for
years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level,
hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little
bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers,
working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding
in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know. A
satellite view of Ball's Pyramid in the Tasman Sea off the
eastern coast of Australia. Here's the story: About 13 miles
from this spindle of rock, there's a bigger island, called Lord
Howe Island. On Lord Howe, there used to be an insect, famous
for being big. It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades
as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island v