Animal Envy Page 7

  “That last remark refers to us two. Even roach scientists think we are expendable, can be hunted to extinction because, as Schal says, we live ‘almost exclusively among humans,’ and therefore Schal doesn’t see any great ecological value to us. So humans can doom us precisely because we are so perfectly adaptable to living with humans exclusively. Doesn’t make any sense, with all due respect. So the way to escape the verdict of extinction, favored even by your ecologists, must be to leave your homes and go into the wilds to make plant materials digestible to raccoons, rabbits, deer, and possums?

  “How can we be sure that this mass migration will not be detected and wiped out? We have another answer. Study us for what you admit is our spectacular adaptation to anything thrown at us from the human environment. You’ve studied other cockroaches in the wilds for their immense resistance to radiation. But did you know household roaches can go weeks without food, and eat almost anything, unlike other insects who have specialized cuisines? Neither heat nor cold air conditioning dries us out, because we have a waxy coating. Just think what you’ll discover about nature and indirectly your own genetic makeup. Think, think, think,” cried the roaches as they were hustled off the stage by Big Bear the Bouncer.

  Seeing roaches making their case without totally turning off viewers quickly drove a small swarm of mosquitoes to demand equal time, followed by a covey of bed bugs. The people of the world were overcome with curiosity and bulging eyes.

  The mosquitoes, pushing onto the stage, didn’t mince words, and admitted to being dangerous to humans, killing more than a million people, many of them children and pregnant mothers, with malaria and other diseases every year.

  This boldness—Limburger called it “effrontery”—caught the attention of the viewers. Indeed, as they appeared, the entire animal kingdom dropped what they were doing to watch in awe, for none of them had ever fought back so successfully against the human kingdom.

  The mosquitoes first blamed the parasites on them that really caused the damage of malaria. They were merely innocent carriers that wanted a tiny bit of blood for the females. Don’t blame them, they said, it would be like blaming a telephone company for carrying bad messages from its customers.

  That wasn’t enough to mollify the horror with which every child regarded them. They argued that their sheer massive biomasses provide critical food for other species, especially birds, and they added that they were important pollinators. No one in human land, especially in Winnipeg, the most dense mosquito haven in North America, was prepared to believe that mosquitoes had any capstone species value.

  The off buttons started voting—their way of booing—but not before an even more disgusting insect, a bed bug, pushed its way onto the stage, standing under a magnifying glass to aid its visibility.

  “Sure,” said the bed bug, “we give you welts, but you have only hurt your own health by the toxic chemicals you’ve used in your bedrooms. Ants and some spiders like to eat us, in case that interests you ecologically. But we must defend ourselves and we’re pretty good at developing resistance against your chemicals. Our fear is that we have no defenders among human ecologists because we live almost exclusively among humans. But how can you be sure that studying our genetic makeup, its toughness and rapid evolution for survival, won’t be of use to your scientists? Forget about extinction, we’re here to stay, so make the best of it.”

  An aging female mosquito, well along in days, popped up on stage to note that before man’s chemical warfare arrived, the deadly malarial mosquitoes saved the jungles and their animal denizens by making them uninhabitable to human intrusions. No longer interested in drinking blood, her words were credibly received as devoid of guile.

  The TRIAD had to admit that it had lost control of proceedings. The mosquito and bed bug had bullied their way on stage; indeed, other animals had encouraged them to grab the mike. The higher animal world was beside itself with joy watching these more resistant lowly creatures tell off their human pursuers. “Wish we could get away with that,” moaned the lioness.

  “That’s really sticking their neck out,” whinnied the giraffe.

  When the mosquito was in the limelight, an ocelot had hollered, “Stick it to them.”

  Unfortunately, pleasing the animal viewers was not the TRIAD’s number one priority, especially not when the very boldness that the animals were applauding was offending many humans and ratings were plummeting.

  The TRIAD called a time-out, an entire day to reconsider.

  Special Events and Produced Shows

  “People are sick of talking heads, even if the head is that of a rhinoceros or a zebra,” said the Owl. “We need more special events.”

  “I believe he’s right,” said the Dolphin. “Some of our best ratings came from the parade of snakes. It had great visuals.”

  They huddled closer and discussed further strategies. The next day’s first sequence was introduced with a human interest segment. A lovely older stallion stepped up to the transmitter.

  “I am a retired racing horse who lives in the lap of luxury. This hardly an arduous existence and I’m pretty spaced out in this ‘activity.’ Horse racing creates jobs—that cannot be exported—and for this part in the economy I am pleased for you. But it is strange that I live better than ninety percent of all humans in the world: what with the best of meals, clean comfort, health care, safety, and pretty clean air here at Lane’s End Farm in Versailles, Kentucky. As for purpose in life, what can be more respectful of posterity than helping to create an equine thoroughbred future, what could be more real?! An attendant staff provides for my every need, want, and even whim. They know far more about what I want than I do. They know when I’m thirsty before I feel it. They even know which of the mares I’d be most comfortable entering to do my business at the breeding barn. Sometimes I have to scratch myself to see if my gorgeous stud farm life is real, considering the plight of most horses in this world.

  “I’m here today as the announcer and also to make a confession. Confession: a race horse is not the fastest animal in the world. Maybe you already knew that. Today I will be your guide to a real all-species contest to see which animal, humans included, is really the fleetest on earth.”

  The Race Is On

  So the start-off program, which the TRIAD brain trust had decided on, was a race between different species of animals for a distance of one and a half miles. Africa was chosen for the course as it was the best location to bring together the African wild dog, the thoroughbred Arabian horse, the lion, the tiger, the giraffe, the cheetah, the rhinoceros, an imported pronghorn antelope from a city zoo, and, of course, a human being.

  The TRIAD predicted correctly that the fascination level would skyrocket, especially with parents bringing their children to the screens to watch the huge crowds assembled in Africa to watch the actual race. Betting was rampant: Internet gambling and conventional betting in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Amazing odds were posted, based on images and myths (the cult of the wild) ingrained in humans since childhood.

  For example, the King of Beasts’ fame and fable made it a “sucker’s bet on race day,” predicted Dr. Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota. Another myth was that a human runner can beat any horse at one hundred yards, so if the runner is in good shape, why not beat the horse at one and a half miles? Don’t runners run twenty-six-mile marathons? The sprinting cheetah had its fans; after all, isn’t it the “world’s fastest land animal”? The African wild dog is superior to any greyhound so maybe it is the dark horse candidate. The giraffe is not known for its speed, unless, that is, it is placed at the starting gate next to the lion and thinks the King of Beasts may start chasing it rather than the trophy. What would an animal race in Africa be without the charging rhino, who displays great speed over short distances? His early charge may scare some of the other contestants into distraction and lack of focus, to the rhino’s advantage.

  Long-time animal experts, asked to predict, chose the winner to be the pronghorn antelope
, followed by the Arabian horse, the African wild dog, the giraffe, the human, the rhino, and the lion, with the cheetah bringing up the rear. The winner could do it in 1:48 minutes, the human could come in at 5:45 minutes, and the lion would take 30 minutes, while the cheetah would come bursting out faster than anyone but soon would be taking a nap in the grass.

  The animal kingdom was not consulted for their predictions by the TRIAD, because the concentration was on the humans. Animals were stunned to see that the human animal experts’ predictions were exactly right. “How much they know about us, it’s scary,” caw-cawed the crow.

  “Next thing you know, humans will want to imitate the TRIAD and have an ocean race between the great fishes,” murmured the giant squid. Lions everywhere were ashamed; their representative rushed out for the first two hundred yards and then just plodded the rest of the course, taking thirty swaying minutes.

  The ratings were tremendous and the viewers and commentators were looking for more specialized programming.

  Special Events

  The next program had been carefully put together and had a startling title: “Please Eat Us in Order to Save Us.” This got people’s attention. Libertarians smacked their lips at the freedom they were expecting to see granted them vis-à-vis the natural world. Progressives imagined the show would promote sustainable development, bringing on regulatory protection to permit more usage in such a manner. Fun-loving viewers wondered whether this was really a humorous, satirical show by the animal kingdom. Many asked whether plant life would be included in the phrase “Please Eat Us.”

  The show opened with a beautiful female bison on the grasslands of the Great Plains. “Were it not for the foresight of people like Theodore Roosevelt, I might not be here. My forebears once numbered tens of millions and their migrations covered the horizons as far as can be seen. The slaughter was first brought upon us by the First Natives but they did not need many of us and they used all of us, almost, including our horns for ornaments. Then came the white man followed by the iron horse. 1881 was a good year for the vultures. Our carcasses littered the landscape, their skins torn off for the hides’ market, while the rest of us rotted for the birds to feast upon. This stemmed from human greed, the belief that wiping us out would lead to the surrender of the Bison-dependent Native Tribes.

  “The propaganda that our numbers were limitless almost finished us off. By the early 1900s, we were numbered in the hundreds, safe only in the national parks. Forty-five million cattle took our place, but could not fill our place as the keystone species for the mighty grasslands whose size was unique in the world. One of the biggest domino effects in world environmental history occurred. One of your writers, J. B. MacKinnon, puts it this way:

  Ninety percent of the tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, fueled by sunshine and watered by rainfall, was ultimately replaced by hard-grazed cattle range and farm-raised crops—often for livestock feed—that require fifty gallons of oil per acre and the irrigation of more than 20 million acres of land.

  “With the vanishing of the bison began the slow fade of ” all kinds of flora and fauna, which he partially listed.

  The bison continued, “You are eating beef burgers instead of buffalo steaks. Imagine, this natural world disappeared because you chose a far riskier, more destructive way to produce protein instead of protecting the bison for sustainable consumption. Had you preferred to eat us, rather than kill us, we would have survived and prospered. Instead you saw us as part of your scorched earth military policies toward the First Natives and your short-term market for our skins. Then, later, you saw us as trespassers in our own habitat. We never had a chance to tell you how important we could have been to you and the supportive natural world because your commercial instincts short-circuited your scientific curiosity. Our modest comeback may show you what you missed all these decades when our gene pool was reduced to so few of my ancestors.”

  The oyster waddled onto the screen to agree. “I am the Olympia oyster, which long ago was your dinner fare. Our species thrived as a result because you wanted more of us from the wild on your dinner plate. Then you polluted our waters with pulp-mill poisons. So you started to bring in oysters from eastern shores. The magazine Orion wrote us up and put words in our shells: ‘The Olympia oyster awaits those who want to eat it. It is hungry for [your] mouths.’ Right on. That way we’ll both increase in numbers and get some overdue respect.” The oyster added that the author also said, “Salmon may actually depend on being fished in the wild.”

  The TRIAD, for the first but not last time, thanked the producers of this latest show who were the kangaroo, the Mexican rabbit, and the Amazon anteater, working together with crisp efficiency.

  Emergencies to Be Faced

  So far things had been going according to plan, but the earlier rule about the right of species in imminent danger to have their news broadcast was still in effect and now the emergency bell rang twice, signaling that two crises were occurring simultaneously, both having to do with birds. The first story pulled at viewers’ heartstrings when lovely chicks appeared on the screens.

  “We are two Arctic tern chicks. Thousands of us have just died—starved to death—because not enough herrings are being caught by our mothers and fathers. Commercial fishermen are depleting the stocks of herring, and warming waters are pushing fish to find colder waters. We’ve declined almost by half in the past ten years. It is not for lack of energy: we fly fourteen thousand miles from the Antarctic to the Maine islands where the gulls eat us if we are too weak from lack of food. One link broken in our chain and it’s a downward spiral. It’s not just our problem or the puffins’ problem, it’s all migratory birds. Please do something!”

  Then some chickens came forward, telling the story that the chickens in Hong Kong were being culled due to some suspicion of them as a cause of the latest bird flu, even though this latest virus has no markers tracing back to them. The chickens plan a desperate march with signs saying “Innocent until proven guilty.”

  Once these two “emergencies” got priority, the lines were jammed with other animals wanting minutes before humans. Perhaps most relevant, in light of what was just said about chickens, was the complaint of some desert dwellers. One camel told the TRIAD, “Here is what I need to say to the humans: It’s not my fault, blaming me for a mysterious virus that has infected hundreds of people in the Middle East, nearly half of whom have died. I’m a one-hump female camel from Oman. You’ve found MERS antibodies and you’re suspicious that some humans have eaten our meat or drunk our milk and so gotten the disease.

  “Now what happens if you humans conclusively find the MERS virus in our camel community? Are you going to do what you’ve done to chickens in Hong Kong, sacrifice us? Fear is spreading throughout cameldom. Please do not keep us in suspense. It is obviously not our fault. Do not impose collective punishment. We have many racers, riders, and owners who may engage in rebellion. Beware!”

  The wolves, facing delisting from being an endangered species and being hunted, wanted to know why cougars, who can kill a dozen sheep in a night, are being given a free pass when there are about the same number of them as wolves in North America.

  However, luckily, as we’ve seen, there was a strict evaluation system in place that filtered out anything but genuine emergencies, none of which were registering at the moment, so the TRIAD felt justified in turning away from this depressing fare to some positive reports.

  Let’s Get Upbeat

  The Owl held up a beautiful insert from the Sunday New York Times called “Changing Lives,” which referred to a program to take some inner-city children to a rural setting for fresh air and connecting with nature. Copy about the the Fresh Air Fund, now in its 136th year, says, “Imagine the relief and delight when a child feels a reprieve from the city’s stifling heat for the chance to run free amid trees and grass, to catch fireflies as the sun sets, to swim in a lake or the ocean, to ride bikes and sit around a campfire roasting marshmallows.”

  “So
you see,” said the Owl, “how important to you and to us it is to keep intact the great and only natural world.”

  The Owl next highlighted a group that was improving human/animal relations.

  The Beagle Freedom Project persuades one animal testing lab at a time to give the dogs to foster families instead of euthanizing them once they are no longer useful for product or pharmaceutical testing. The dogs have never felt sunshine or set their paws on green grass, according to the Washington Post. At one event, seven beagles, their vocal chords cut by the releasing lab, were given to foster families who came from New York and New Hampshire and Potomac, Maryland.

  This report received an unexpected boost when there was a roar worldwide by the big cats the moment they heard the Elephant’s sonorous trumpet of praise.

  It’s worth noting, the Elephant added, that not all dogs are in medical labs to be experimented on; some receive privileged treatment. The Post has a report on Upton, a four-year-old Labrador, a working TSA dog at Dulles, being grandly examined by a veterinarian stationed at Fort Belvoir’s dog care and annual checkup facility. He is enjoying the attention and has his eyes on a jar of crunchy treats.

  “I tell ya,” Upton told the viewers, “a dog’s life doesn’t get much better than this. They treat us—canines or law enforcement dogs at TSA, the Secret Service, Amtrak, and the U.S. Capitol Police—better than many of you humans are treated, especially in the quality of medical care. Any signs of heatstroke, hip strains, vitamin B1 deficiency, intestinal infections, and the clinic’s workers are right there.”

  Having earlier heard of the beagles’ plight and rescue, Upton and his German shepard friend, called Igor by humans, shook their heads in disbelief and resignation. Igor simply said that it wasn’t his business to question or resist, only to follow orders of his masters and sniff, sniff, and sniff.