The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Well, the bad news arrived this week and no, it wasn’t about our favorite President or Global Warming. It wasn’t even about the buildup of arms near Iran or the launching of intermediate missiles in North Korea. Venezuela was even pushed off the front page. Not that these aren’t all definite or even existential threats, but a United Nations science report was released warning us that if we do not wise up as many as a million species on this planet will become extinct in the next hundred years.

I know, faux science. So what if 20% of the earth’s species bit the bullet over the last century, you’re thinking. We got plenty more where those came from and probably even some brand new ones incubating in the jungles even now. Ebola, AIDS, swine flu viruses, hey, they’re rolling in to replace the ones dying out, right? Hopefully we’ll lose a few pests, poison ivy, mosquitoes, antibiotic resistant fungii, the cold virus, Herpes and the Trumps, all those questionable species that make our lives a living hell. Nettles too!

Course that isn’t exactly how it works, is it? We got this whole interdependency thing going, this Web of Life, that means when one species dies, plenty of others suffer, kind of like losing the Democrats and now look what we got. But I digress. As usual. My apologies. Take mosquitoes instead. There’s always folks who want to introduce sterile male Anopheles into the environment to put a stop to Zika or the black plague, but how many birds live on eating mosquitoes? What happens to them? And if those particular birds die, what dominoes are next?

You get rid of Trump, maybe you end up with Bannon or some other alt-right dickhead. Okay okay, I’m off subject here again. Sorry. My point is this. I was up on my roof the last two days, scraping sixteen species of mosses, lichens, small
bonsai trees in the gutter, an entire universe of mushrooms, alien byrophytes, plus all their attendant bacteria and god only knows what else munching merrily in the flora that makes my roof an interdependent world of decomposing fir needles, leaves and windblown seeds. I argue with the mizzus every year that we need to let this live in peace, that we must learn to coexist, that science is now on my side on this.

But I’m always outvoted one against one. So if a few hundred species died the last couple of days, don’t point an accusing finger at me. And anyway, there are 999,900 left. Although … I may have unintentionally set off a dire chain reaction. With a little luck maybe the Trumps will be the next victim in a domino of extinctions. Wishful thinking, I know, but a man can dream, can’t he?

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