What’s A Hundred and Ninety Million Years, Anyways?
Now, I admit, I’ve never been one for creepy crawlies. Regardless the species. Insects. Snakes. Arach- just about anything. Frogs and other wet, slippery water and muck dwelling dudes pretty much round out the list of creatures I’m OK to know exist for whatever reason they’ve continued to evolve on this lovely, green earth, but don’t much care to see first hand.
Except for Peepers, or thumbnail sized Chorus Frogs, to whom I was just introduced a couple of Junes past, visiting in-laws in Virginia. Interesting that I lived there for over six years and never ever saw one. Apparently, now with kids, I am more inclined to crawling amongst those that dwell in moist grass and mud.
Quick related story: Youngest son, at time newly minted four-year-old, manages to squish, crushing pick up one of the cute, little critters. As he squeezed, with three little clumsy fingers, tiny creature from crowded muck all life was immediately crushed out of teensy weensy froggie form, unbeknownst to well-meaning child. Holding lifeless creature in his tiny palm, poking him with stubby index finger, states solemnly in a hushed little voice, “Look, he’s sleeping!”
Ack!
Anyhoo… regardless our own small part in the crisis that has become their rapid and imminent demise as a species, I am totally bummed to hear this news. OK, fine. News to me in this, my insular and narrow world of soccer, swimteam, and the sickly repeated rapid and imminent demise of the celeb-utards at PerezHilton and People Magazine.
However, thanks to CBC Newsworld, I’ve raised briefly my gaze from celebrities navel to world at large… and what do I find but frogs and amphibians on the brink of extinction…. Now for those of us utterly, completely and downright effing incredulous skeptical of Adam and his frigging rib, this is more than somewhat unsettling.
We’re talking about frogs and amphibians for crying out loud. Those that came long before us. Those that made their way tentatively from the water to the shore… before the dinosaurs. Before mammals. Just… before dammit…. They’ve bloody well been here, like, forever! And now…
Are facing a crisis by, surprise-surprise, our hand, and that of a near-invisible fungus that has spread around the world over the last decade. Our modern day canary in what has become our modern day, and so very global, coal mine.
Honestly….
Speaking of environmental crisis, I can’t help but mention an ongoing regional issue I consider to be somewhat local, only because I frequent the city that reaps the rewards of the blatant rape and pillage in addition to sharing a neighborhood with those who, as party to the rape and pillage, also reap the benefits- hence they can afford a SECOND HOME in our area where the median home price is over $550,000. There’s no getting around it: Oil produced from the bitumen lying in the sand under Alberta’s boreal forest is one of the dirtiest fuels in the world. Under current conditions, extracting one barrel of synthetic crude from a mine requires roughly two to four barrels of fresh water from the nearby Athabasca River (an amount top water scientists say the river cannot sustain), along with 750 cubic feet of non-renewable natural gas and about four tonnes of tarry sand and “overburden” – the industry term for… soil.
And so it goes….
