Weeping with the Elephants...

Photo by Heidi McKinley

As a conclusion to the four-part series "The Elephants in Our Living Room," I post this photo by Heidi McKinley. 

It is common knowledge that elephants weep...mourn for their slain herd-mates...over the destruction of their habitat.... 

Elephants are emotional "beings."

We are called to weep for them....

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 4

African Elephants -- Public Domain (AnimalGalleries.org)

Part Four of a Four-Part Post

Awww, who are we to say "NO!"? And who would listen? Not the shadowy purveyors of shark fins or elephant tusks and rhino horns. Not the oil-soaked barons with their winsome promises and frankenfrack realities, or the tinkerers of witches' brews that foul our soils and bodies. Not legislators who feed at the trough of power.

And, of course, not because of a few cranky voices; no NO is loud enough in itself to be heard and reckoned. "They" have smirked a thousand times at NO.

But "NO!" is the only force, the single word we have. The MLK "NO!". The Gandhi "NO!". The NO that is fixed and immutable. Ground-swell NO. Finger-pointing NO. NO that stalks with constant footage and solid rhythm and irrefutable evidence. That notes  the sullied by their bloodied hands.

If. If we care enough to do this kind of "NO!", to do this "STOP!"

Most of us, as I said, are consumed by life's demands. But many of us are also blinded by our toys―and yes, our ploys. Oblivious to or paralyzed by the dying of a natural world once rich and ripe―teeming with irreplaceable, unimaginable, breathtaking diversity: immune to the magic of all things winged and finned and limbed―and the incredible variety of flora that sustains them.

In this world grown pinched and crowded, every tiger leaves his perfect pelt stretched upon each wall. Every doodad carved of ivory gathers dust upon our shelves―totems of the devil's delight for our triviamania. Every lithe sea creature slicked and sickened by oil, or dragged from the waves for senseless slaughter, ends up in our boat . . . . All  this will rebound upon us all.

For this is the final seduction: The shameless buying and selling and reshaping of the human soul. The trinketing of earth that feeds our vanities.

Enough is not enough for us. Never. Not in the board rooms, nor the sullied halls of congress. Not across the sweep of our society, no―not when bigger-smaller, newer-sleeker-better is parked across the street. Or in our pocket. Or wedged into our living room, where it fits so nicely and defines us so well, and matches the carpeting . . .

Or did, until the elephants came, in single file, a dreg of rumpled ghosts.

We must make room for them, these iconic creatures. Here in my home, and yours. We must weep for them, with them; cry out, call out, trumpet in their singular voice, tell the dawdling world of their distress, their demise . . . and make sacred space for them, safe in their own milieu. Before the last of them lies butchered on the bloodied soil.

Or it won't be long now.

Will we ride into history on the back of our beloved "mastodon," the gentle beast-nonpareil-progenitor on this Ark that is earth? Will we even know what we have forfeited? Noah is not waiting with a gangplank and an open door. The boat is pulling away emptied.

Open your door. 

List of Information and Statistics relevant to above:

*According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, 96 African elephants are killed per day for their ivory tusks. This is called poaching and is one of the primary reasons for their population decrease. The other major component to their population decline is the loss of their habitat due to human encroachment and deforestation. Nin Ninety-six elephants are killed every day in

Statistic: "More than 100,00 elephants were poached in Africa between 2010-2012. (National Geographic Society)

Although it's technically illegal to buy and sell ivory from freshly killed elephants, the sale of older ivory is still perfectly legal in much of the U.S. -- including California.

And since it's so difficult to distinguish between new and old ivory, the state's ivory market, the second largest in the U.S., has continued to skyrocket. In fact, the proportion of ivory offered for sale in California that is likely illegal has doubled in the last eight years. (NRDC)

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"Tiger numbers in the wild are thought to have plunged from 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to between 1,500 and 3,500 today." (http://bigcatrescue.org/tiger-facts/)

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Bees are a 'keystone species', and honey bees especially, are regarded as ‘canaries in the mine’ – an indicator of wider environmental damage and problems – a warning that action needs to be taken to rectify a dire situation, one that potentially affects not only honey bees but also other insects and creatures up the food chain.

Honeybees are dying at astronomical rates in the United States, Canada, and Europe, a phenomenon which could potentially have dire effects on the world economy and agricultural ecosystem.

http://www.bees-and-beekeeping.com/honey-bee-deaths.html

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 3

Elephant Odyssey at the San Diego Zoo

Part Three of a Four-Part Post

A world without bees and butterflies, dancing flower to flower? It's happening.

Big Chem brews the dark magic that kills the weeds that kill the soil that kills the blooms that feed these tiny grace-notes. This is the house that Chem built.

Chemicals and escalating diseases and pests―and God knows what else―are the death of them.

There is no compensation for the demise of the honeybee. Or the Monarch, our king of butterflies, whose milkweed staple has been largely eradicated. Or, indeed, the great striped cat, pattern-perfect in its timeless life-rhythm. Or . . . in a lovely-strange, impossible sense, the elegant "caprice" that is a dolphin―so peculiarly akin to the lumbering grace of its brother, elephant. Immutable diversity, not a bone alike. But ah, such amazing tenderness; such wisdom . . . such humanness.

So unbelievably akin to us. Our shadow selves.

A frenzy of bees gone insane? A shark drowning in its own life-home-waters, fins hacked off for a few bowls of soup? The horns of a rhino ground for a useless tonic? This is a real insanity, a malignancy that metastasizes daily. The list goes on and on, swells and feeds and breeds. Different rationales, varying methods, one over-arcing mindset: Gain. Prospering. At any cost to environment and ultimately, life on earth.

Most of us, in our once-blessed LaLaLand, are not directly guilty. But by neglect we harbor the unconscionable among us―say, ivory dealers who, with virtual impunity (through native poachers) are steadily slaughtering earth's timeless herds―nearly a hundred a day, official estimate!* And what of those within our nation's boundaries who willfully trade with or provide transport for certain foreign fishing industries―despite their well-known brutality. Supporting the agonizing deaths of great fish―to stoke frivolous appetites far beyond our shores! Where is the anger at such desecration?

A forfeiture that too often comes with nothing more than a "Tsk!" or a woeful shake of head. The world is dying of Tsk!.

All this, and more―infinitely more―is transacted daily from our shores with our implied "consent." With our consent―us, enlightened America? The land of the free and the brave?

Where are the brave hiding out? God bless the burgeoning movements, the NGO's and enviro-activists, and others who carry their placards and call out our spineless ways. But they are too few, spread thin among the battlefields of this age's travesties.

We in the background of this legacy of death-based greed go on with our undeniably busy lives with little thought for such atrocities . . . offering little-to-no demand for reproach and restriction. It simply doesn't fit into the needs, the mindsets of our already complicated state of being. But by this unawareness, or passivity, or disengagement, we allow evil to triumph. And yes, our earth's historic die-off is largely that. A historic betrayal indeed.

Why the disconnect? Because we do not care enough to see enough to do enough? To say "STOP!"?         

To find a way to do "STOP!"?

to be continued...

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 2

Photo in the Public Domain from The Dodo.com

Part Two of a Four-Part Post

A couple of years back, late summer, Southern California in unending drought:

The bees searched my shriveling yard day after day for fresh blossoms. Not speaking bee, I couldn't explain this dearth to them. Finally, one-overheated morning, and with an undeniably overheated heart, I fed them―from shallow pans laid out across the patio. Each container was dribbled with thin tides of sweet-water brew, dotted and criss-crossed with small rocks and gnarly twigs for landing.

They came, these sleekly shaggy little refugees. A few, and more. And more. Day after day they met me at the back door, waiting. Learning me, knowing. They circled me in a halo, walked my skin, tangled in my hair, sometimes nibbled me―a slight tickle, perhaps to see if I were made of sugar. They never "bit the hand that fed them." And around the rims of each pan they clustered and waited. Waited for life.

For more than a few days, it was like this―calm enough, and almost routine. Something of a fairy tale, a small and intimate cross-species undertaking-understanding. One bee hovered on the tip of my finger, and I whispered to it, consoled it, watched its tiny  mandibles twitch, as if wringing its hands in telling of its hunger.

Somehow, strangely, I was mama, and these, my diminutive family. And a shared grief.

But then the newbie's suddenly showed up. The word had spread. Wave after wave of bees, several varieties. It was bedlam. Oh, what was wrong with them? They fought, climbed savagely over each other, drowned in the sparse quarter-inch of brew, a tide of floating bodies―or jerked through the air and dropped to the pavement in a witless frenzy  . . .spinning, twitching until their lifeless little selves were spent.

They came to me in extremis. Beyond feeding. As suddenly as it began, it ended. It had to. I gathered up my pans and my pain.

Strangely, a year later, bees returned―as if their clan had been told the story. A few, at first, scoping the scene, I guess. Never many, and not for long, but they greeted me once more beyond the door, circled me . . . with hope and hunger. I stood in silence. And left, and left them hungry. A day or two of dwindling and it was over.

The ache in my guts and soul have never dimmed. I had become, in my well-meant ignorance, a part of their death-dance. Their plaint still echoes through me like a buzz-saw in an emptied room, describing absence.

And so I have a hive―oh, a wealth of flourishing hives!―back here behind my eyes, anchored in field after field of clover.

to be continued....