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As is self-evident to the First Nations/First Peoples, "Man is embedded in nature. The biologic science of recent years has been making this a more urgent fact of life. The new, hard problem will be to cope with the dawning, intensifying realization of just how interlocking we are. The old, clung to notions most of us have held about our special lordship are being deeply undermined." Lewis Thomas - 1975The old...excerpts: "I am a superstitious man, believe in magic, and, as was graphically evidenced when the first men went into space thereby able to look down upon our planet, recognize the Earth as an entity, living, breathing, calculating as necessary. "The First Nations/First Peoples are firmly bound to the Earth and consequently well know the ecological state of affairs. And so, I wonder...AIDS, Hantavirus, Filovirus, E. coli 0157:H7...could these be some sort of sign, a tremor, a ripple from deep within Mother Earth? "What if the ecosystem recognizes its enemy and starts to assert itself in ways from which humankind can neither retreat nor cope? "Huichol Proverb: When the world ends, it will be like when the names of things are changed during the peyote hunt. All will be different, the opposite of what it is now. Now there are two eyes in the heavens, Dios Sol and Dios Fuego. Then, the moon will open his eye and become brighter. The sun will become dimmer. There will be no more differences. No more men and women. No child and no adult. All will change places..."Now, the new: Some undertaking, some reaction, some response is being generated by Mother Earth to the ongoing onslaught on Her by the ravages of Mankind. Two examples of this follow... A sponge, a living sponge...the most benign of creatures, quietly filtering food from the water flowing through, over, and about its point of anchor. Yet, French zoologists from the University of the Mediterranean have just discovered, in a shallow underwater cave, a new species of sponge... this one is carnivorous.
"The stagnant water in the cave makes filter-feeding impossible, so sponges that live there have developed passive [so far] tentacles covered with microscopic, Velcrolike hooks. These hooks snag shrimplike crustaceans that happen to swim by. Within one day after capture, new tentacles envelope the victims, essentially burying them alive. Digestion then begins. "'This is the equivalent of finding a human with gills,' exclaims Michelle Kelley-Borge, a sponge expert at London's Natural History Museum. The sponge's only known relatives live on the ocean floor."Now, this seems perfectly logical to me. So much so that one might wonder why hasn't it occurred before. But sponges are simple, aren't they? Guileless and consistently so? Not necessarily calculating? Or, perhaps not. For as mankind has polluted the Mediterranean to that point where it now is the most desecrated of the planets' seas, the sponge has learned to stalk. And if it grows and becomes more knowing, becomes more hungry...? In 1988 scientists at the University of North Carolina discovered a predatory, single-celled organism (dinoflagellate) whose characteristics were so unbelievable that most scientists refused to acknowledge its existence. Pfiesteria piscimorte (fish killer), when triggered by an as yet unknown substance secreted by fish, sends neurotoxins into the water and air which paralyze a fish's nervous system. When the fish dies the P. piscimorte attaches itself and literally eats holes in its prey...so effective is P. piscimorte that "pools of dead fish [have been found] with holes eaten through them" and fish have been observed literally "trying to leave the water" to escape. "Whether humans are affected by this dinoflagellate's toxin remains to be seen. Researchers think it's unlikely consumers eating fish are in danger, but anyone with frequent exposure to the creature could be in peril. Several researchers working with piscimorte have reported bouts of memory loss and disorientation." Subtle intimation this... Accordingly to Charlot, a Flathead chief, 1876: "...We were happy when he first came. We first thought he came from the light, but he comes like the dusk of the evening now, not like the dawn of the morning. He comes like a day that has passed, and night enters our future with him... "He has filled graves with our bones. His horses, his cattle, his sheep, his men, his women have a rot. Does not his breath, his gums stink? His jaws lose their teeth and he stamps them with false ones; yet he is not ashamed. No, no; his course is destruction; he spoils what the spirit who gave us this country made beautiful and clean..." |