Anthropomorphism Rules

Caterpillars at Work

Caterpillars are loud.  They even sound like some wild beast, growling, as they tear apart their prey, ripping through fur, gorging on flesh, and chewing on bones.  And when the killing and feeding is done, little is left of what once was.  Maybe a bone here and there….a skull perhaps.  Its work is done.  Belly satisfied.  Time to move on to the next meal.

Lone Mountain Park is headed into Phase II (or is it Phase III or Phase IV?….can't keep track) of development.  Call me melodramatic, but every morning I'm up there walking my dogs to the deafening sound of these machines (yes, I am even missing the sound of mockingbirds!), I cannot help but feel just a bit mournful for the natural desert that is being devoured, not to feed the housing industry this time, but to make a recreation area "better" than what was already there, "better" than what nature already provided, offering "better" teachable moments to children than what nature herself could demonstrate (will the world's animal lawn ornaments be the only clues we have of the real ones that actually roamed our neighborhoods?…but hey! you retort, lawn ornaments aren't pests!).   I muse about the destruction happening to so many little homes, homes for rabbits, snakes, moles, ground squirrels, chuckwallas, reptiles, tortoises, birds, spiders, scorpions….To them, the horror of these yellow monsters burying their homes (most likely with some of their residents still in them!) and destroying their entire habitat is not much different than the recent earthquake in Nepal, burying homes and people in them, wreaking mass destruction.  Mother Earth just wanted to change things up a bit.  Make things better.  Move some rocks and earth around. You know.  

When it's all over, when the dust is settled (and turned into paved parking lots, grass, and rockscape), the rabbits will come back.  The snakes and reptiles and birds will return.  They will adapt.  I know this because I see and hear them in Phase I of the park that I use everyday.  I wonder if they have stories passed down to them from their ancestors.  "You can't IMAGINE what this place was like before!  Before the disaster.  Water was a bit harder to come by, but the solitude!  The desert!  The stuff to hide under when the hawks were out in the middle of the day!  Oy!  Now, we just have to deal with all these newcomers and their fricking dogs and kids who keep trying to terrorize us…."

Just like the stories my family passed down to me, having come to this valley in 1910.