Two Hedgehogs Walk Into A Bar...

I can only imagine what the Bremen, Germany cops were thinking when they responded to the report of a disturbance in a suburban neighborhood. Whatever was going on, it was loud enough that a crowd in their nightclothes had gathered about the back yard. And, truly, it sounded as if children were being tortured somewhere in the dark. But when the police switched on their spotlights they were shocked to discover in the harsh glare…two hedge hogs engaged in passionate sex. And when they were hit with the spotlight, trapped and surrounded by dozens of gaping humans in bathrobes, this spiky little pair of Erinaceinae insectivores merely became louder and more… passionate. The cops reported that, “The hedgehogs were loud and uninhibited in their actions…”, and that “…”The many observers didn’t deter the hedgehogs in the slightest, in fact they intensified their activities.”
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The police shouted, the owners of the house stomped around and waved their arms, but nothing interrupted the delicate but intense, and loud, “fornication.” Eventually the cops and the crowd decided to switch off the lights and go back to bed, hoping privacy would discourage the pint sized exhibitionists, as it did. Still, they had to wonder, what had caused such uncharacteristic boisterous and raucous behavior.
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It could be blamed on global warming, I suppose, as was the arrival amongst the canyons off of Monterey Bay California of hoards of the six foot long, 110 pound carnivores, the Humboldt Squid. This vicious creature normally lives off the Baja peninsula, but since 2002 in their thousands they have become permanent residents off of Northern California and have been seen as far north as the Gulf of Alaska. The Humboldt are the smartest of the invertebrates and are ravenous eaters, eagerly turning cannibalistic if the opportunity presents itself. They have already begun to rearrange the food chain in their new home, decimating popular commercial fish like tuna and hake. So if the price of fish sticks goes up, blame it on the squid, and global warming. Unless you think there could be another, more ominous explanation…
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It is in Isaiah that the lion lays down with the lamb, sort of. What it actually says in Isaiah 65;25, is “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock,” This is not exactly an apocalyptical vision, but then the good book doesn’t say anything about cows eating chickens, which is what has happened in the village of Chandpur, in West Bengal, India. Villager Ajit Ghosh was convinced the neighbor’s dogs had eaten 48 of his birds, but last Tuesday night he and his wife sat up to guard what was left of his flock, when, “We watched in horror as the calf, whom we fondly named Lal, sneak into the coop and grab the little ones with the precision of a jungle cat.”
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The story was confirmed by a local television station which video taped Lal wolfing down a desperately chipping baby chick as of he were a kernel of popcorn. (youtube.com/watch?v=c2eEGiU8vD8) Okay, it wasn’t exactly like a jungle cat but I’ll bet the baby chick was impressed. Mr. Ghosh was quoted as saying, "The local vets said the cow was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his previous birth.”
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And I suppose that the fish in the Neuse River near New Bern, North Carolina, were, in a previous life, fish. But as of July 20, 2007, they were dead fish; dead perch, dead trout, dead flounder and aptly enough, dead croakers, all dead along a one mile stretch of the river. Members of the Neuse River Rapid Response Team responded to the incidence, and, according to the New Bern Sun Journal, “Team members estimate the total number of fish dead at 6,666”. Could this be a sign of the approaching apocalypse? How could it not?
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Perhaps the ultimate proof has come from the isolated Gough Island, a volcanic bump atop the mid-Atlantic ridge, midway between South Africa and South America. It was New England “sealers” in the 1820’s who wiped out the fur and elephant seal populations and abandoned the only land animal to invade the island, the lowly house mouse. The island is home to the only breeding populations of Tristan Albatross and Atlantic Petrel, perhaps 10 million of them. And, since 1957 the only human occupants have been a seven person South African team serving year long tours at the weather station.
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That meant the only law in effect on Gough Island was Darwin’s Law. In 2001 an errant infrared video camera accidentally captured mobs of “…giant, flesh eating super mice…” attacking and eating Albatross chicks. Now, “giant super mice” is a relative term, but The National Geographic web site described the situation this way;
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“Nearly three feet tall, a Tristan albatross chick can weigh up to 22 pounds, or about as much as a turkey. Gough Island mice weigh just 1.2 ounces on average. Video cameras revealed one pack of ten mice feeding on a Tristan albatross chick's wounds as it nested on the ground. Footage also showed mice devouring Atlantic petrel and great shearwater chicks. The birds did not fight off their attackers, even as some mice fed inside the body cavity of one albatross chick. Researchers say the footage provides the first hard evidence that mice previously thought harmless to seabirds are willing to attack prey more than 300 times their weight. Geoff Hilton, a U.K.-based biologist with the Royal Society…has compared the mismatch to a house cat attacking a hippopotamus.”
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And in this case, the house cat is winning because the Hippo does not defend itself. The Pretoria News of July 25th, 2005, detailed,
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“More than one million albatross, shearwater and petrel chicks …are being eaten alive every year by mice. The mice attack at night, singly or in groups, gnawing into the chicks' bodies as they sit on the nest, and eventually killing them through blood loss or destruction of vital organs.The scale of the killing has astonished the ornithologists who discovered it. … "The albatross chicks spend eight months sitting waiting for food from their parents," Dr Cuthbert said. "They are 250 times the weight of the mice, but are largely immobile and cannot defend themselves. For a carnivorous mouse population, it is an easy meal of almost unimaginable quality. The result is carnage. We think there are about 700 000 mice." Scientists suspect the mice are also eating the eggs and chicks of the rare, ground-nesting Gough bunting, a small finch found nowhere else in the world.” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/17586752.html
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So this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with the twitch of a little pink nose and a little squeaky, squeak, squeak.
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