Scary Beasts

I tuned in last night to Animals Behaving Worse, a program in the PBS "Nature" series that I had started watching the night before. I had been amused by the antics of thieving baboons and marauding black bears falling out of trees...


... and was expecting more of the same as light entertainment before lights out. I had not expected the dark turn the narrative took. Instead of cheerful buffoonery, I was treated to the spectacle of scary creatures.

Hitching rides aboard the modern transportation systems we humans use to navigate the globe, it seems these fellow living beings have found ways to relocate and adapt to new environments with frightening ease. Take the case of the coqui frog...



... arriving in Hawaii from its native Puerto Rico and proliferating wildly, depriving Islanders of sleep with their incessant, high-pitched croaks. Seems it would take the arrival of the dreaded brown tree snake ...


... (originally from Australia and other spots in the Far East and now terrorizing Guam, thanks to military transport) to control them--a solution devoutly NOT to be wished.

Add to this mix: the huge and rapidly expanding population of Asian carp ...


... from East Asia, now infesting the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and threatening the Great Lakes; the Africanized bee--called the "killer bee"--ten times more persistent in the pursuit of intruders on their nests and many times more lethal with its sting; and the plague of red fire ants from Brazil; and you have a sense of how scary the migration of species can be. And these are but a few examples of many. Click on America's Least Wanted Species and the larger picture begins to emerge.

One thing is clear, however: that the most territorially invasive, the most rapacious, the most destructive of all species is our own. We set the example for our fellow beings on this planet, and are scarcely in a position to complain when they follow in our footsteps. The irony is that they might well outlast us. The bees and the ants, the cockroaches and the flies (save that one executed last week at the hand of our president!) may inherit this planet and continue to populate it for eons after our extinction.

What's the lesson of the dharma here? To be respectful of all other living beings, perhaps, and not to assume superiority, as we have done these many centuries. To learn from them the skill of adapting to the environment, rather than forcing it to adapt to us and to our needs. To live in harmony with other species, and with others of our species, and with demands on the environment commensurate with our needs, and theirs. You'll maybe see others; that's my list.