FOOD CHAIN MIGRAINE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-06-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     My wife forwarded me an email from the Westchester Department of Health that says that they are offering FREE minnows to put in your ornamental pond. Apparently the minnows eat the mosquito larvae that spawn in the water and grow into man-eating, six-legged monsters that prey upon innocent women and children, although I have never known any innocent children. I don't have an ornamental pond, but how is the Department of Health going to know that? I just can't resist anything that's free. I have a whole drawer full of key chains that were given away FREE at every event I've ever been to. And I just have to order anything on TV when the commercial says, "AND, if you order NOW, you can get a second one TOTALLY FREE!" I do a somersault in glee: WOW! TOTALLY FREE! After I injure myself with the somersault the guy says, "Just pay a separate fee." Wait, what? I'm thinking of releasing the minnows into my drawer and seeing if they'll eat some of those key chains.

     Anyway, mosquitoes are more than just annoying, they can carry the West Nile virus, which causes fever or in rare cases, meningitis. They must have released minnows into the East Nile, because you never hear a word from them. You've probably already tried a bunch of things to get rid of mosquitoes at your party, and all they did was get rid of the party. But you can get up to 250 pounds of minnows, and maybe that will work. I don't know if you can pick the ones you want, but I would choose just one 250-pounder that looks like he never missed a meal.

     If it goes wrong though, don't come crying to me. We have some mice in the winter, and you'd think that cats would be the perfect solution to the problem. But not only are the cats completely uninterested in anything that might make us happy, like chasing away mice, but they have plenty of unflattering habits themselves. I would argue that the mice are better behaved, better trained and more civilized than the cats, but I'd have no one to argue it with. So we got a dog to keep the cats from a life of crime, but the dog has its own agenda and the cats aren't on it. So we got a dog trainer to help, and now we have to pay the dog trainer to keep the dog in check. It's not like we can unleash a lion to keep the dog trainer from sending us bills, but the thought has crossed my mind.

     What I'm saying is that if you go down the path of altering the balance of nature, you may live to regret it, and if you don't live you'll regret it even more. I remember when we visited some friends  in Vermont, and the town had introduced ladybugs into the ecosystem to help control the aphid population. "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home! Your house is on fire, your children are gone!" I sing. (Hardly any reason to go back home, I guess.) And before anyone knew it there were ladybugs all over the place and they had an infestation on their hands.

     If Charles Darwin were alive today what would he say about it? To be honest with you, Darwin's theory of evolution never impressed me that much. It's a slight improvement on the Adam and Eve story which I never could make heads or tails of, with the spare ribs and snakes and apples I guess. But if humans evolved from one-celled organisms, why are there still one-celled organisms? It's embarrassing for all concerned that there are still more one-celled organisms on Earth than there are humans. And if everything on Earth eats everything else, why hasn't the world been taken over by Brussels sprouts, which have no natural enemies that we know of?

     I sure hope there isn't any truth to the evolution idea, because what if something evolves that is smarter, bigger and stronger than humans, and it happens to notice that we're destroying our own habitat by burning fossil fuels so that we can pay for a few Nintendo games for the children of oil executives who will be forgotten in the blink of an eye? And what if it releases something into the environment to get rid of us, like a bunch of hungry 250-pound minnows? Well, I almost started to make sense there, but it was a false alarm. Nobody is invincible, so we'd better start to get humble. As I was telling a couple bobcats the other day, you may be the nastiest critters in the forest now and then, but in the broader food chain, you're just lynx.