Saturday, July 15, 2023

Who’s the real invasive species?

As close as I can figure out, we have four or five pairs of ruby-throated hummingbird nesting around the house, two or three behind the house and two or three in front. Or, there are only two or three pair in all and they use both the front and back feeders. Looking at the size of a female at the feeder hanging from the deck as I type this, I’m astonished at the distance something that size migrates. Since, in my younger days, I’ve been miles out on the open ocean in a 19 foot boat, I think I have a decent sense of relative size to distance traveled.

female ruby-throated hummingbird
female ruby-throated hummingbird
Photo by J. Harrington

I know monarch butterflies also undertake a long migration, but they take several generations to do it in one season, which is also astonishing. Most of the time, unfortunately, I tend to take for granted the wonders in front of me. In part because I don’t get to personally watch the details of those trips, just as I don’t recall my embryonic development, which limits my ability to relate to what goes on in a chrysalis.

Do you suppose the increase in fine particle pollution from Canadian and Western U.S. wildfires will affect birds or butterflies or other critters in more ways than habitat loss? What, if anything, do we know about the effects of PFAS/PFOS on fish, wildlife and invertebrates? I’m pondering these questions after reading several articles on felt wading boots and fly fishers as vectors in spreading aquatic invasive species such as 

"rock snot" (Didymosphenia geminata); a gastropod, New Zealand mud snails (Potamopyrgus antipodarum); and particularly out west, whirling disease which is caused by a cnidarian (Myxobolus cerebralis) of the class Myxosporea. Viruses are another potential threat to coldwater streams. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) has garnered the most attention recently but there are other potential viruses that can be considered AIS

The definition of an invasive species usually involves creating some sort of economic or ecological harm to the human species and its environs. Now that we’re in the Anthropocene, haven’t we, by definition, become the only species with negative global impacts? Isn’t there a biblical saying about the qualifications of who should cast the first stone? And shouldn’t we do a better job of remembering that denial is not just a river in Egypt?

Maybe after the current air quality warning ends I’ll be less cranky, if another one doesn’t come along soon.


Prayer for the Mutilated World


what will be left after the last fidget
spinner’s spun its last spin

after the billboards accrue their thick
layer of grit masking advertisements
for teeth paste & tanqueray gin

after the highways are overtaken
by invasive forests

after the ministers give up their gods
& the rabbis their congregations
for drink

after new men rise to lead us sheep
toward our shearing, to make bed
sheets from our hair

after the high towers have no airplanes
to warn away & instead blink purely
toward heaven like children
with one red eye

after phone lines do nothing
but cut the sky into sheet music
& our phones are just expensive
bricks of metal & glass

after our cloud of photographs collapses
& all memories retreat back
into their privatized skulls

after the water taps gasp out their final
blessing
what then?

when even the local militias run
out of ammunitions

when the blast radii have been
chalked & the missiles do all they were
built to

when us jews have given up our state
for that much older country of walking
& then that even older religion of dirt

when all have succumbed to illness
inside the church of our gutted pharmacies

when the seas eat their cities

when the ground splits like a dress

when the trash continent in the mid-atlantic
at last opens its mouth to spit

what will be left after we’ve left

i dare not consider it

instead dance with me a moment
late in this last extinction

that you are reading this
must be enough


********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

No comments:

Post a Comment