Endangered Species
Entry posted by caldrail
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"EEEEERGH!"
Believe me, at three in the morning, that high pitched screach is enough to scare the living daylights out of you. Yes, it's the urban foxes again, lurking in the darkness to hunt smaller nocturnal animals lurking in the darkness, or the bonus of edible rubbish we humans have discarded, or as I've come to believe, just to wander around and annoy people with high pitched screaching.
This time the fox was very close to the backs of the houses where I live. That's unusual. Normally they wander around the far side of the yard where they can scratch out a living from the other street. Now they're prowling around the backs of ours, no doubt searching for that unwashed white Eunos Cabriolet they used to see there.
Or is this the start of a more sinister and dangerous trend? I haven't forgotten that story in the news a little while back where people were getting attacked by urban foxes in their sleep.With a bit of luck, they'll eat the burglars and grafitti sprayers making local residents lives a misery in this part of Swindon but I guess in all probability they'll just make do with a resident or two.
As an unemployed person I've sort of gotten used to being at the bottom of the heap, despite equality legislation, but if I were honest being at the bottom of the food chain isn't something that appeals to me. I mean, we humans are supposed to be top dogs on this planet, not lunch. What's the point of of being intelligent, technologically advanced, and able to walk on the moon if we just end up on a late night menu?
Our american cousins are probably chortling when they read this. After all, if they get threatened with wildlife, it's usually much bigger and fiercer than a fox, and they also have firearms to deal with it. Then again, without the bigger and fiercer carnivores to occupy the upper reaches of the food chain, perhaps the British Urban Fox is a much nastier species. Perhaps we British need stronger measures to deal with them. You see, in Britain we don't bother with petty little hunting rifles (unless you're a wierdo out for revenge against society). We use dynamite.
You just wait Mister Fox. That Old College site is going to be demolished soon. Probably when you least expect it...
Still Going Down
Airshows are inherently risky. Every so often there's a news item where some aeroplane or other got into difficulty and ends up in a ball of flame. Thankfully the crew often escape in the nick of time and all we get is a dramatic (and expensive) addition to the spectacle. Tragically though being strapped into a fast moving vehicle barely above ground level does make for a very unforgiving experience when it all goes wrong.
Flying old warbirds is always going to have an element of risk, whether at an airshow or not. Sadly, the list of aeroplanes coming to grief is starting to lengthen. Like that B17 in America, crash-landing and burning out recently, or the loss of a P51D at Duxford this weekend. It was quite alarming to see a photograph of this much cared for World War Two fighter pointed seventy degrees downward little more than fifty feet to go. Just as well the pilot got out immediately. He wasn't going to survive that.
I've always been in favour of keeping old warbirds flying. It's a sight to thrill the heart because there's so few of them, because they're so iconic, and because they're the result of one man's vision rather than a computer program, they're often achingly beautiful to look at. For those airframes no longer considered airworthy, there's always the museum, but as I usually say, it's like looking at a stuffed bird in a glass case. Dead. Sterile. None of the sounds, smells, and visual wonder of seeing that familiar shape rumble overhead.
What I read in the aviation press is not encouraging. I can honestly see a time coming when insurance and operating costs will simply force these old warbirds into retirement forever. Enjoy them while you can. Warbirds are an endangered species.
But Not Out
Another flying species, our friendly neighbourhood mosquito (the sort that likes to bite us) is proving to be ever more resistant to chemicals designed to control them. Why that should suprise us is a mystery to me. We've killed off all the weaker ones.
Also, inbetween the relentless adverts for starving african children, is that advert for helping the Amur Leopard. There's only thirty five of them left apparently. That's far less than a viable population for most species but I also note that with conservation and legislation the Amur Tiger recovered from a similar precarious toehold in the wild.
That leaves me with a moral dilemma. Spend my money on big cats that cause problems for their human neighbours? Or help africans survive terrible drought conditions though they might also grow up to be armed with AK47's and RPG's with which to cause trouble for their neighbours? You see, when you take the emotional attachment out of the equation, it all looks a bit different. Maybe that's why the wildlife advert promises us a cudly toy to persuade you to invest in saving leopards.
And Finally...
Sadly nuclear weapons are not going to go away either. They've been invented, we know how to build them, and various nations around the world want to join the list of users because having a big dangerous weapon to hand is a very appealing idea to human beings. But this isn't a tirade against nuclear lunacy, or the current covert war being waged to prevent loonies from getting their hands on one, but rather the stations set up to detect illicit detonations of these devices. As you might imagine, a nuclear weapon makes a big bang. So it's possible to detect when someone has set one off without telling anyone else.
Interestingly, there's been a spin-off from this technology. Now we've learned that roughly every decade a large meteoroid explodes in Earth's atmosphere with similar power to nuclear weapons. Remember that Tunguska Event in Siberia when hundreds of square miles of forest were mysteriously flattened by a mid-air explosion?
Sadly UFO and conspiracy theory buffs will be disappointed, because this sort of thing is going on all the time and probably always has. It isn't an alien UFO blowing up on re-entry, nor some warhead fired in pre-nuclear times. It is however a chilling thought of what one of these rocks from outer space could have triggered during the Cold War. That would have spared you the trouble of reading this blog.
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