HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-05-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2013. PAGE 5.
You got $70 to spare? Looking for a
new hobby that just might make the
world a marginally better place?
Have you considered adoption? I have.
Signed the papers, paid a nominal fee and took
in a sweet, little orphan named Anna.
Well… ‘little’ is perhaps not quite accurate.
Anna’s chubby, truth to tell. She’d tip the
scales (if you could get her on the scales)
somewhere north of 1650 kilos.
But that’s not morbidly obese for an
elephant.
That’s what Anna is – Elephas Maximus
Sumatranus, if you want her proper name.
She’s an elephant, wild but endangered, living
in the jungles of her native island of Sumatra.
I didn’t adopt her just to have some gossip
fodder at cocktail parties; it’s a matter of life
and death. Anna has found herself in the
crosshairs of the international marketplace
which, like some ravening junkie vampire,
combs the planet looking for new sources of
natural resources to suck up and exhaust.
Great globs of tar sand in northern Alberta,
diamonds in South Africa, bauxite in Jamaica,
mahogany from Africa… the Hoovering of our
Earth goes on and on.
And now it’s Sumatra’s turn. The forests of
Sumatra are being clear cut and turned into
palm oil and pulp and paper at breakneck
speed. Good news for timber tycoons; nice – if
temporary – jobs for Sumatran tree cutters and
their families.
But nobody told the elephants.
Their habitat is disappearing. The elephants
are hungry, trampling fences that never used to
be there in their search for food. They raid
coconut plantations, invade villages and
injure, even kill villagers.
But not as fast as villagers are killing them.
Elephants are getting shot, trapped and
poisoned faster than momma and poppa
elephants can make baby ones.
Which is where The International Elephant
Project comes in.
It’s an Australian initiative and the premise
is simple: for $69.44 Canadian you can adopt
a Sumatran elephant. You can’t take it home,
but thanks to a GPS collar which each adopted
elephant wears, you will receive regular
updates on the status of your ‘ward’. The
collars also allow project managers to track
each elephant and to herd them away from
potential conflict zones before they get killed.
Your $70 helps pay for the monitors.
I’m not Anna’s only adoptive parent – it
takes more than $70 to keep a full-grown
elephant wild and free. But they reckon there
are only 1,500 – maybe as few as 1,000 –
Sumatran elephants left in the wild. So far,
only five of them – Anna, Bella, Cinta, Dadang
and Elena – have been certified for adoption,
but it’s a start – and we have to start
somewhere.
Reminds me of the time I was walking along
a beach near Parksville, B.C. when I saw a
young kid pick up a stranded starfish and toss
it back in the ocean. I was touched by his
naiveté.
“You know,” I told him, “there are thousands
of kilometres of beach in this province and
millions of stranded starfish on them. Do you
think throwing one back in the ocean makes
any difference?”
And the kid said to me: “It does to the
starfish.”
Read more on the International Elephant
Project at www.elephant.org.au
Arthur
Black
Other Views Saving elephants $70 at a time
There is a lovely cycle of events that
happens in this community every
summer and it has been happening for
almost 40 years: the return of the Blyth
Festival.
Every spring in Blyth the streets become
alive with Festival staff and cast members
buzzing around like bees working to complete
tasks in preparation for the summer’s slate of
plays.
This week, for instance, the cast of Beyond
The Farm Show has returned to the community
for a third time. Actors have spent two previous
visits learning about agriculture through local
farmers, local business owners and members of
the community.
More than anything else in my life these
days, perhaps with the notable exception of the
start of the baseball season, the arrival of those
associated with the Blyth Festival has come to
signify the return of spring for me.
Watching the young men and women of the
Festival’s crews such as carpenters, production
managers and technical directors run around
the village is always a welcome sight. Last
week, for instance, The Citizen received its
delivery of the spring issue of Stops Along The
Way ; we left wooden skids outside for the
taking and they were snatched up by Festival
crew members within minutes. Soon they were
transporting these large pieces of wood by
bicycle. That wood will soon become part of
one of the play’s sets and it’s happenings like
that that remind everyone something big is
coming. The anticipation of the season is
already in the air.
At the same time, the Brussels Farmers’
Market kicked off on Friday, which in recent
years has been a lovely reminder that we’re in
the time of year that should be cherished in
Canada, where winter dominates the year,
every year.
Now, of course, this all flies in the face of the
roller coaster of weather we’ve been on for the
last few weeks. I don’t even want to get into
my Mother’s Day activities, but I will.
I was in Detroit to watch a handful of Detroit
Tigers games. I have to believe that I am in
elite company now that I can say that I have
watched a baseball game in the snow. I think
it’s us and the folks at Exhibition Stadium in
Toronto on April 7, 1977; the Jays’ classic first
game ever, which was played in the snow. I
think that’s the list.
However, it feels like the cold weather is
gone for good and that the sun could just be
here to stay. If this doesn’t end up being the
case though, please don’t blame me. I’m just a
man writing a column.
So back to the Blyth Festival. It is a sure sign
of spring seeing the unfamiliar, but friendly
faces of the theatre world return to the village
and it can’t help but invigorate those of us who
have endured one of the most persistent
winters in recent history. These smiling faces
are certainly a reason to get excited about what
is just around the bend.
It’s not quite summer yet, but it’s getting
there, perhaps a little slower than we’d like, but
it’s certainly on the horizon.
So like skids of wood being snatched up by
Festival employees from The Citizen offices,
it’s interesting to think of what those skids may
become in the grand scheme of the Festival.
It’s also interesting to ponder what this year’s
season may hold for all of us.
As the village’s population swells for the
summer, remember how lucky we all are to be
on the front lines of this gift of the Blyth
Festival for all of Huron County, and beyond,
to enjoy.
That time of year
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Recently I’ve found myself in a lot of
discussions involving the recently un-
deceased (zombies, if you will).
Completely sane and rational people are
beginning to think that the end of the world
won’t be heralded by some supernatural
trumpet or come at the hands of some sort of
alien race looking to enslave us but be brought
about through some kind of disease that turns
its hosts into mindless devourers or infectors.
In this way, humanity’s end will be brought
about by our own hubris and I see that as more
likely day after day.
I don’t think that voodoo zombies, found
throughout African and Haitian folklore will
be the end of the world. I also don’t think that
the Hollywood zombie, the one that is created
through a pandemic and is technically dead but
still up and eating brains will be responsible. I
think it will be something far closer to one of
the many examples of chemical, parasitic or
fungal mind control exhibited throughout
Mother Nature that, to the untrained eye, looks
like a form of zombiism. I think, that in
studying these events and in exploring subjects
like the rejuvenation of dead flesh, humanity
will provide its own undead uprising.
Take, for example, the four strains of fungi
discovered in the rainforest over two years ago
that take over an ant’s body and command it to
find the perfect growing area.
The fungi, called Ophicordyceps fungus,
target carpenter ants in the rain forest and
result in a fate worse than death in my opinion.
After infecting its host, the fungal spores
guide the ant to find the perfect spot; usually
the underside of a leaf, at the perfect height
providing it with optimal temperature and
moisture levels. It then directs the ant to grip a
leaf in what scientists are referring to as a
‘death grip’. The ant’s mandibles lock and
won’t let go. After that the fungus begins the
final stage of its life where it bursts through the
skull of the ant and drops spores on the ground
to infect other ants and start the process all
over again.
So, to summarize, the fungus controls the
ant somehow, then uses its skull as a planter.
Imagine, for a moment, if that kind of
fungus was somehow mutated or even
designed, as a biological warfare option, to
work on human beings.
While that’s scary enough, the scarier fact is
that recently scientists matched the tell-tale
signs of the fungus (a dumb weight-shaped
puncture surrounding the vein of a leaf where
the ant performed its death grip) to evidence
that is 48 million years old. For 48 million
years the ants have been facing this fungus and
they have yet to evolve a means to prevent it
from happening.
Another example is the liver fluke, or
dicrocoelium dendriticum. This little monster,
and I don’t use that term lightly, uses three
different creatures as vehicles to spread itself.
Labelled a flatworm, the parasite begins life
in piles of grazing-animal excrement. From
there, it is eaten by a snail. It then embeds
itself in the stomach lining of the snail.
When it reaches maturity, the parasite
hitches a ride on the slime trail of the snail
which is then imbibed by the ant.
Apparently the ants are the sheep of the
mind-control-assisted-reproduction world.
They are very easily controlled.
The parasite then makes its way to the brain
of the ant and, night after night, forces the ant
to climb on to grass or similar grazing material
where a grazing animal eats it. Then the
parasite lays eggs and the process starts again.
Another ant-targeting walking-dead
producer is the pseudacteon genus of the
phoridae species, or the ant-decapitating fly.
Not only does this fly lay its eggs in the
thorax of an ant, but it does so while the ant is
still alive. The eggs hatch and the larvae make
their way to the brain of the ant where, as
maggots, they eat the still-living brain of the
ant.
After awhile, there’s no brain left but the ant
keeps on living. Eventually, the head falls off,
the larvae are mature and the whole cycle
starts again.
And just in case you think that this whole
‘zombie’ thing has to include the insect world,
I’ll tell you about toxoplasmosa gondii.
This parasite reproduces in cats and is then
expelled and infects rats. The parasite then
makes one minor change to the rat; it makes it
seek out, rather than avoid, areas marked by
cats. The rodent walks into and hangs around
an area its natural predator is sure to find it in.
The really scary part about it though, is that,
aside from cat droppings, the parasite can be
found in undercooked meat and scientists
estimate that 50 per cent of humans have the
parasite in their body. Scientists are continuing
to find more and more evidence connecting the
parasite to schizophrenia.
Another fluke (flatworm), the euhaplorchis
californiensis, causes the fish it infects to
spend more time in the air and near the
surface of the water to get to its ideal breeding
and distribution centre: the digestive tract of
birds.
Hairworms, known to inhabit grasshoppers,
will actually cause the grasshopper to ignore
its greatest drive: the drive to survive. The
beings force the insects to jump into water and
drown themselves. After which, the hairworms
swim out and seek new grasshoppers to infect.
The last example of nature providing
humanity with the perfect building blocks to
craft their own destruction are the zombie
bees, or, as I call them, zom-bees.
Like the decapitated ants, honey bees, which
are already mysteriously dying out, are the
breeding ground for apocephalus borealis, also
known as the zombie fly.
The fly injects its larvae into a honey bee,
which is then eaten from the inside out. Tell-
tale signs are the bee flying into things or
flying in irregular patterns and, eventually
dying and having the larvae spill out of their
body.
While there isn’t any spreading of a disease,
or walking around without brains, or being
tricked into becoming food for a lucky
predator like the previous cases, the bees can
appear to be zom-bees because of their erratic
behaviour which onlookers have described as
similar to shuffling, shambling zombies in
horror movies.
So to sum it all up, you can keep your bath
salts, your Worcestershire sauce being used as
embalming fluid and your brain-eating
zombies. I’m fairly sure that when the end
does come, it’s going to be because scientists
will have explored a little too far with one of
the above examples or something very similar.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Zombie apocalypse? More like zombee