Wild Child and Nature

Early this morning I was watching PBS and there was an interesting Nature program about childhood for wild animals. It was fascinating and disturbing. What was most disturbing was the high mortality rate for young wild animals as they faced disease, hunger, predators, and even being abandoned by their mothers in time of crisis. It was heart wrenching to see these baby animals die but it got me thinking.

How many people have no idea how harsh nature really is? Some people think that nature is gentle and motherly. Those isolated from nature may believe that this is really how things are in the wild.



In reality Bambi would be in frequent peril from hunger, cars, and predators, and later in his life, man.

There has been an increase in wild-animal attacks in North America lately and a shocking number of them are joggers and hikers who are totally unprepared to meet a wild animal, especially one that sees them as a source of protein.

What this means is that so many have no idea how to survive in the wild. Those who romanticize nature frequently have no idea of what it is really like. Those who want to return to an agrarian society would be the first to starve.

While most would never want to go back to a primitive way of living there are those who see it as a paradise. Yes paradise where there is hunger, if not starvation, from late winter to early summer. Where a woman needs to bear 5 to 6 children to assure a steady population, not to mention childbirth being the main killer women. Yes the Luddites want paradise.

Hurricane Katrina showed us what happens when nature strikes hard and the people don't know how to fend or think for themselves. Those people died because the government always cared for them and when the government wasn't there they didn't know what to do. Many of them died because of their own lack on knowledge.

We can see the results of that Volcano in Iceland but imagine one many times worse. Imagine Yellowstone erupting, as it probably will sometime in the next couple of centuries, throwing ash a couple feet deep across the entire globe and the whole planet sliding into a year or more of global winter. Those who survive will do so by a combination of location, preparation, skill, self-reliance, and luck. The survivors will be those who know how to survive and the destruction would be so complete that the government would be over-whelmed to the point of paralysis. Those who are dependent won't stand a chance.

That's nature for you.

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She's been off the show for a couple of years now.

Sunday, Mother's Day

It seems as if I am never on line anymore with so much going on.

Mom is doing better than I expected but she will not be coming home. She is going to a rehab center for a few weeks and then probably a nursing home from there. Dad, surprisingly, is willing to go to one provided he shares a room with Mom. He still loves and worries about her after 54 years. My mother has had issues most of her life and now, while she has largely recovered physically, talking to her still reminds me of the conversations from Alice in Wonderland.

I would like to stop preparing things and actually get my garden in but we are in a 3 - 4 day cold snap with freezing at night so I have to wait. I have to cover the bushes that have already been planted every night and go from there. Blasted global warming anyway. ☺

My employer is purchasing an abandoned factory (plenty of those around here) and will be expanding a bit. He is picking up the production of a defunct company. The twenty to forty jobs he will be adding are welcome but far short of what this area needs. My county could use several hundred, if not a couple thousand, jobs. He also filmed a commercial in the plant last Wednesday. I saw them spiffing up one of the production machines and getting ready, but didn't see the filming nor have I seen it played.

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