Through a poetic-philosophic conversation, the two authors, Nina Lykke and Camila Marambio, reflect critically upon the discourses on the Covid19-pandemic and their conventional inscription in hierarchizing dichotomies of human/non-human and culture/nature. The word ‘tale’ is used to indicate that the intervention is a poetic fabulation, meant to prompt new imaginaries and ethical speculations about other — more caring and less anthropocentric — worlding practices than the currently dominant ones. The triptych format combines a theoretical reflection on the need for a changed planetary ethics, a poem on the experience of imminent death, and a tale about a bat, a pangolin and a virus.