What falls away with ease
You know, when you’re deeply unpopular and you’ve outstayed your welcome by somewhat longer than it takes to soft boil a stone, people will give you signs. Those signs will, in time, become more and more pronounced.
It may start with a simple stare or a polite cough but then it will work itself up slowly to the glaringly obvious – like mount Vesuvius come knocking on your door.
Humanity, as a whole, is not very good at taking hints.
Nature, on the other hand, can do a Vesuvius, if need be.
So, now we have sturgeons leaping out of the water to beat people senseless. There are squirrels out there going Rambo on us and attacking folks.
Worse, even nature’s snitches & collaborateurs, the sniffer dogs, have had it with their evil masters and the public at large. They have started to misbehave so badly, that they have to be laid off - and you know that you are in real trouble when even your own trusties and camp guards turn on you.
But why do they hate us so? the human heart cries out.
Well, maybe humans aren’t the only ones who watch the news. I can see sturgeon and squirrel, sitting in some pub, watching CNN.
“I do understand that you would take the first excuse not to speak to Michael Moore.” the sturgeon said.
“Yup.” said the squirrel; “And Paris is a lot easier on the eyes.”
“Indeed.” the sturgeon said. “But to compare her to Mandela…”
“Yeah. Shit like that makes you want to go out and buy an Uzi, to do some serious trick or treating.”
Anyway, it’s not just the animals that have had it with us. More and more people too are coming to the conclusion that the planet would be better off without us.
There’s a new pledge group that’s gaining new members by the day. They call themselves Anything But A Human – or ABAH. They take a slow and gentle approach to ridding Earth of humanity, simply by shutting down the assembly line.
No longer putting their trust in even the best of contraceptives they have decided that they will no longer risk having sex with other humans. Abstinence, of course, is seen as the most dignified way. Still, in a pinch, anything other than a human partner will do.
So, there have been some much-publicised cases (much applauded by members of ABAH) about people who have really started to practise what they preach.
One man, driven by lust, took his bicycle to a hotel room and did the dirty with his two-wheeled mate.
Another one, who’d gone to the woods, to seek solace in splendid isolation, got so giddy with desire, that he grabbed the first comely hedgehog he saw and made passionate love to it.
So, it seems that for humans the end, at long last. is nigh.
Or, as the poet Jane Hirshfield once wrote,
And however sharply
you are tested -
this sorrow, that great love -
it too will leave on that clean knife.
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