Save the worms

I've always been the same from a very young age. 

I remember watching episodes of Lassie as a young child would make me cry uncontrollably every time. My mum wanted to switch it off but that would make me even more upset, as I knew there was going to be a happy ending.

When I watched Watership Down aged 8 I was inconsolable 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m88kgA7rGsU

Now I avoid watching anything I know will be triggering. If something comes on unexpectedly I have to avert my eyes, fast forward or leave the room. If I don't I will still be thinking about it days, weeks or even years afterwards.

I'm always rescuing bees that look like they are on their last legs or worms, beetles etc that are in danger of being trod on on the path. If I don't 'save' them it preys on my mind all day

I had no idea they did this. It must be fascinating to be able to watch them up close

We have a 1930s house and the wooden edging of the eaves under the roof clearly has holes in it.

We won't have it replaced however as starlings (on the UK conservation 'red' list) use it as an entrance to nest at least a couple of times a year.

It's right above my bedroom so each morning I wake up to their usual whistles and other odd sounds 

They are fantastic mimics.  They mimic other birds and have been known to mimic machinery.

Here's an interesting fact: they clean the nest by bringing the faeces out in their beaks.

I can watch them do this from my bedroom window.

What I'm curious about is where they take it as they fly off at high speed with it when they could just drop it when they exit.

So, if you ever get bird poo land on you, it could be from a bird's beak!

I Sperg said:

From my perspective, you got off your behind and took action to try an increase your perceived odds of survival. That gets my maximum respect.

Thank you.

Thank you also for some information I didn't know (or at least remember), especially this:

I Sperg said:

BUT. Them Greenham Common women (undoubtedly encouraged or helped in some way by the materials you were helping to produce, forced the US to scrap an entire nuclear system (The MX missile) which led to a specific treaty that made the world a whole lot lot safer until last year.   

From my perspective, you got off your behind and took action to try an increase your perceived odds of survival. That gets my maximum respect.

What you might not know, is that your actions along with others and the greenham common women achieved solid (but definitely unacknowledged!) results.

To be fairer to me, I was undiagnosed Autistic just escaped a full on abusive family life and very, very self absorbed, trying to unfuck myself and find a place in the world and manage to run a nice flat whilst on the dole, so I had my hands full.

From a "nuclear perspective" the U.K. has, ever since we retired the V bombers when I was a kid, relied on our submarine deterrent. What is not generally known is that the missiles were supplied at a very good rate by the U.S. on condition that THEY can veto the use of those missiles, by technical means if they so choose, thus at a stroke, ending Britains claim to an independent Nuclear deterrent! 

In short, instead of being a sovereign nuclear power, we became a "hanger on" to one of the larger nuclear forces whilst publically pretending (to the point of national level mendacity) otherwise.

NOW. That'll be news to a lot of you, and many won't believe me, but I've studied nuclear war and maintained a plan to detect the onset of it in time to escape, or take adequate shelter since the 90's. We always have been "vulnerable" since WW2, when we bankrupted our nation.

BUT. Them Greenham Common women (undoubtedly encouraged or helped in some way by the materials you were helping to produce, forced the US to scrap an entire nuclear system (The MX missile) which led to a specific treaty that made the world a whole lot lot safer until last year.   

I Sperg said:

I just feel its hideous that along with us, so many animals, insects and other lifeforms will suffer MASSIVE injury for which they have no culpability whatsoever unlike myself who SHOULD have supported the greenham women, and SHOULD have protested, but didn't..  

That's an interesting comment.

I feel the reverse.

I was a member of CND, went to talks (including Monsignor Bruce Kent), went on marches, typed the local newsletter **.

However, now I feel I was naive/idealistic.

Although I always believed in mulitilateral disarmament rather than unilateral, where would we be now without our deterrent?

I'm not sure we would have been able to support Ukraine and we would all be living in fear of our lives (even more than we are now).

I don't think the US or Russia etc would ever have disarmed, so we would have been left vulnerable, as Ukraine was historically.

________________________________________________________________________________

** I typed this for a printing machine that was already an old style printer at the time. 

Mimeograph.  This would be around 1987/8.

I used a special paper and my manual typewriter made stencils of the letters to print.

If I made a mistake I had to go over it with a special liquid that created a seal again to break with the correct letter.

The liquid took ages for it to dry.

It was a nightmare and I did this at night after a full time job and a second job.

It's going to lose an awful lot of it to "deadhand" if we "oh so valuable" humans don't stop the ongoing evil game of death that is growing daily between the three major nuclear powers.

Humans might yet leave this planet recovering from a major eco-catastophe, ready for a more sensible lifeform to assume supremacy.

But yours and my attention is being focussed on carbon credits, based on what some qualified folk claim is dubious science, rather than the immediate threat of nuclear annhilation,which is arising because we are led by such egregrious liars, that the russians refuse to believe anything we might say!! 

I just feel its hideous that along with us, so many animals, insects and other lifeforms will suffer MASSIVE injury for which they have no culpability whatsoever unlike myself who SHOULD have supported the greenham women, and SHOULD have protested, but didn't..  

Autistic hyper empathy at work. I know it hurts.

Do what you  can do and recognise some of ot is other human's responsibility. 

We all are on this planet to fight for our fellow creatures, but we can only go so far as individuals. Do your bit and know you have done your bit. The rest, is in the hands of those who follow your lead 

No it would continue to exist. But it would loose 100% of its art, philosophy, music, science, culture and civilisation. I wouldn't call that thriving. Humans have done some stupid things but they are the only intelligent species on this planet and that counts for something.

In Saudi Arabia they do build bloody great culverts to allow the animals crossings of the roads that go through the desert.

I know this because on the first day of my new contract we went quad biking in the desert and one of our party who was following the course of the road hit the entrance to one that was buried in the sand, breaking her arm in the process..

Battybats,

I really, really, resent snails sometimes. We have a lot of them around here and they turn up in the most unexpected places, always under my feet.

That horrible and irrevocable crunch just makes me feel miserable and guilty, and it's like they do it on purpose some days, just to make me feel guilty for forgetting to pick up a bloody torch and look where I was walking...

I wasn't sure it would read as I thought it, but it seems it was taken exactly as intended. 

Result!!

At times it's good to focus on points of connection rather than dissonance.

I was very glad to read this.

The world would continue to thrive if humans no longer existed. Nature would take over where hideous cement structures stand. That’s not going to happen with humans around. If we’re not continuing to destroy the planet, we’re working out how to destroy each other. 

TBH it's because of this, conscience, or soul or what ever you want to call it that I think individual human life has value where animals don't. No monkey ever worried that it was damaging the forest. Or cried it self to sleep for cannibalising a baby monkey in time of famine. That human beings are developed enough to have things like a sense of guilt, even existential guilt, is what sets us apart from the animals.

Or the way mordin put is https://youtu.be/P-Kko6P5B_4

I rescued a cockchafer from a spider web once. It’s not like the spider would have been able to eat it, plus the noise that poor beetle was making trying to get away was unreal. They’re quite good at noisily dive bombing people too. 

Next time you tell me off, over something I've said, I'll remember that at least as far as this post is concerned, Debbie, you and me are 100% "lockstep" in our attitudes towards the animals.

Don’t worry, you don’t sound offensive to me. In fact it’s this kind of superiority that humans have over any other living creature that is the main reason I favour animals over humans. Humans are the ones that have f&£:3d the planet up and constantly put species in danger of dying out. Yet we’re supposed to be the more intelligent ones…