There Used to be Wolves

We were ripe for a pandemic.

Where I live, the locals call it “spazzin' out.” But people here are pretty much the same as in other places...

These days, we seem to get a bang out of stressing-out and getting excited over some manufactured crisis, or over silly things of which hardly anyone used to take serious notice. Omigosh, the “fiscal cliff!” Look out, we're all goin' over - imagine how everyone will suffer!

Omigosh! Wait wait, that didn't kill us, they bought us out of trouble, the darling legislators, for just a while, too bad it was necessary to really really raise taxes! But that won't affect us till later. (Hey you know, it's on somebody else, anyway!) Oh no, it's dreaded sequestration!! Your job probably won't be there tomorrow, you won't recognize your streets for all the uncollected trash, leaky naval vessels will sink and drown everybody on 'em, ohh!! Let's raise taxes!

And then, there's the weather. Once every couple of days I do take a look to see what upcoming weather may be like. They've gotten better with the predictions, so I do look at that.

Luckily we’ve got Global Warming and I don't have to worry about the governor closing all of the highways for ten inches of snow in the mountainous areas of the state. No doubt when snow does come, like last winter, I will stop by the grocery on the way home a week prior to an over-hyped snow squall, and there won't be any bread or milk available. All sold out.

Today, it was flooding. Heavy, heavy rains and flooding. I was off in a county that neighbors my own, and I admit, it rained pretty hard there for almost an hour. Omigosh, it was wet out there. People were inconvenienced! When it was time for me to head on home, the rain had stopped. I left my umbrella furled and gave my dad a call on the walk to the parking lot, to see how he was doing. “Watch your driving,” he cautioned, “The rain is gonna come heavily again. You live near a river, and they're calling for dangerous flooding anywhere there's a river.”

I had to laugh. “Dad,” I chuckled, “It's been so dry at my home that it would have to rain for three days before there'd be any runoff. And right now you could just about walk across that river without getting wet, without even being Jesus. I hope we got some rain.”

“Well, you be careful,” he advised again. “They've gotten better at predicting the weather these days.”

That much was true. As I reached my car, I felt a single raindrop hit my nose. The clouds were indeed darker than most rainy days, and they stretched off to the south, toward my home. As soon as I started my car, the radio came on, and with thirty seconds the ragged honk of the emergency alert system replaced regular programming. I would hear this same thing three more times on my way home, about thirty miles, fifteen miles as the crow flies. Low-lying areas were already flooded. Flood stage inundations were about to breach the riverbanks, somewhere. Most drownings happen in cars, no driving through mud puddles. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, there was actually an emergency where I lived. After all, I've twice come home to downed high-tension wires in my yard. One of those times there was a fire because of it, three hundred feet from my house. I've seen entire gravel driveways washed onto the street, nearby. And the biggest issue, the fire police. If there's a tree down anywhere on the entire length of the lane that runs by my house, they'll block it off from end-to-end and I won't be allowed to go home. It's happened before.

But, no sooner had I reached the halfway point on my drive that I no longer needed even intermittent wipers. The road was barely wet the rest of the way home. When I pulled in, I could tell that there had been a sprinkle, because the grass was wet.

The sun was shining.

But, on the far side of the valley, where Pleistocene man Tay-nah once ran into the giant short-faced bear, threatening cottony-white mists encircled the mountain tops. A telltale red sky – well, to be honest, they were luminous pink clouds – foretold the coming of a great meteorological disaster. Really soon.

There weren't even any mud puddles to not drive through.

I'm not complaining. I can continue to carry water to my tomato plants. But doesn'tanyone else get tired of the hype and bullcrap?

I don't actually live in a town. My home is rural. A couple of times I attended local township meetings, just out of curiosity. Well okay, I had an issue. But the topic of conversation was a different issue, one raised by the local volunteer fire companies. They were tired of false alarms for open burning. Some frantic person thought there must be a full-blown house fire, because some smoke appeared. The solution? No burning, of leaves or brush or anything, on holidays or Sundays. New ordinance. Before the vote, I meekly asked why they had to come out, unless the fire was confirmed as a structure fire? The answer: If they don't respond to every single call and one of them turns out to be an actual structure fire, they'll get sued. Their insurance carriers are all terrified of lawyers.

Aren't those the same guys that wind up in D.C.?

When settlers first arrived in my county long ago, it is said that the local native population was fairly friendly. They only destroyed the local fort once. But I doubt the settlers, or the Indians for that matter, ever worried much about the weather before it got here. They had other things to worry about, like wolves. But the wolves appear to be gone, and people think they need new things to worry about, like terrifying weather incidents.

The other night, I finally got a chance to watch action-hero Liam Neeson in the movie, “The Grey.” And while there is a distinct human affinity for wolves, there's definitely another side to them. This movie does a fantastic job of depicting it. Anywhere the natural populations have never been completely expunged from existence, like in Alaska, wolves are unusually large, aggressive and capable.

Wolves are carnivores, opportunists, killers that rely on natural abundance to supply their needs. In short, they aren't for anybody or anything else. They are too aggressive and self-serving to be concerned with whether they're killing off their own support system.

Suddenly, it hit me. The wolves aren't gone. They simply moved to Washington.

In a world where the news we receive is abridged by media owners to avoid exposure of the crimes and unethical practices of their corporate colleagues and the graft-ridden politics they support, weather emergencies become cheap fodder to occupy the minds of the masses.

And as a direct result, we're not focusing on the right problems. Not even close.

We were better off when the wolves were in the forests.

**********