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" 507 years old. That&amp;#039;s a heck of a run, no matter how you look at it. It&amp;#039;s the average age of a giant redwood tree, or, to be fair, a drop in the bucket to a bristlecone pine tree, which can live up to five thousand years. But for a breathing creature of the fleshy persuasion, 507 is the top of the charts, almost double the age of Adwaita, the giant tortoise, who was 255 years old when he passed in 2006.  It&amp;#039;s 270 years older than the United States of America. In 507 years the world has gone from stinking, creaking wooden ships sailing seas fraught with pirates and imagined sea monsters, exploring new lands for freedom and conquest, to stinking, acidic seas fraught with man made plastic particles and very real corporate monsters raping once-pristine lands in a quest for more oil and more money and just more. From candle-lit darkness every evening to the cold blue glow of television emanating from every window in a neatly-spaced subdivision, horses and steer to Smart cars and White Castle. Major wars, from the Revolutionary to the WWs, have scarred and redrawn the boundary lines of the entire planet. The human population has spiked from around 100 million to a staggering seven billion. In the process, more than one thousand species of animals have vanished, gone forever, extinct, kaput. But, for 507 years, this one survived, persevered, prospered even. Stoically, steadily, staunchly surviving, unfazed by the big events happening all around. Going about his business, doing his part, fathering hundred of millions of offspring, a solid legacy in place. 507 years, until one day, plucked from his home, science had its way with him, ending Ming the clam&amp;#039;s life in the very study of it, in the act of splitting him asunder to more accurately count his growth rings and determine, to the year, the span of his life. Sadly, neither science nor Ming can likely appreciate the great irony of this situation. But a life of this magnitude, five centuries, six or more spans of a human&amp;#039;s - entire generations - deserves a nod of acknowledgement. Godspeed, Ming, and well done. We can all only hope to achieve and witness but a fraction of what you, so humbly, have. Now, who wants to go and get some chowder? I&amp;#039;m starving. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a26039/an-ode-to-ming-the-clam/>