The newspaper said scientists are nuking an island. Ok, maybe nuke is a little strong. They’re just giving it an animal enema, how’s that? That’s what the LA Times said, and I trust them. They may share yellow snow, but they won’t show me yellow journalism.
This weekend, they were showing me a green island—green and rocky. See, there’s this little island between Australia and Antartica. I don’t remember it’s name, but I’m sure that it’s an aboriginal word meaning “little craggy rock between Australia and Antarctica.”
“I name this island ‘Rob!’”
As the black and white story goes, this island is an old island with really cool rocks. Supposedly they grow them there. No really, the rocks jut up from the Earth’s mantle and literally grow. This is ideal for all sorts of projects, especially those that require rocky surfaces. Sacrificial altars, casting the first stone, Yahtzee tourneys, all are great things served on the rocks—and this island has them.
In the early 1800s, ships used the island for clubbing seals and gutting penguins. It was apparently quite the skinning hotspot. Ships would sail from all across the globe just to kill their animals there. Captain Stubing chartered his first Love Boat there, and I think it may have been the home of the first Starbucks, before Seattle seahawks carried those away to foreign shores.
Anyway, amidst all the good time seal clubbing, stopping ships would unload stores of wheat and dried goods so that there would be food for their next stop. And where the wheat goes, so go the rats. Yup, they bolted from the boat like rats from a…well, I have a sinking suspicion you get the idea.
Anyway, once the rats hit land, they did what rats do best: They ate bread and bred. Since the local ecology consisted of a few forms of small birds, the unnatural rats didn’t have any natural enemies, and were left unmolested to eat, drink, and molest the landscape like packs of industrialists.
This wasn’t a problem for the sailors; they were sea faring men who’d seen molesting before. This wasn’t their first orgy; it was just another plunder walk off the plank. Sailors had ruined eco-systems before, and they knew what salves cured what itch: the next trip, they brought prides of cats. The cats ate the rats that ate the malt that sat on the island that Earth built. Problem solved.
Not really.
See sailors are fun guys with many weird customs. Another strange sailing custom is that after sailors introduce cats to an island, they bring rabbits. Now, I suppose it could be argued that rabbits are there to feed the cats, but I could have sworn that that’s what the rats were for.
So after several years, the cat’s and the rabbits learned to live in harmony like the RIAA and music pirates: sure the cats gang-pounced the occasional rabbit, but when you breed like bunnies, what’s a missing cottontail or two? Both cats and rabbits flourished.
By this time we’re into the late 1900s and science has come a long way. Hoping to undo the four-legged havoc they’ve already reaped on the tiny island, scientists introduce a virus-carrying flea that only affected the rabbits. Kill the rabbits kill the problem, right? Wrong.
See, sure, the rabbits dwindled, but the cats are still hungry. Remember those two types of indigenous birds I mentioned in the beginning? They’re now what we non-scientists like to call “extinct,” thanks to the foreign cat.
“ooops! My bad, “ says Bob the Scientist, as he sets back to the ol’ drawing board.
Scientists didn’t count on something else: the islands rabbits will to live. They’d apparently seen the instructional film “Jurasic Park” and learned to, evolve. Darwin and his Beagle would be proud; the rabbits are no longer susceptible to the poison flea pill.
These Movie lovin’ bunnies celebrated they’re victory, and after reciting the president’s speech from the end of “Independence Day,” the rabbits devoured the remaining island flora. Now the island rock is well, just a rock.
Stuck between a rock and a barren place, scientists have decided if the natural habitat can’t live on the island, nothing can. They’re next mission is to exterminate all the cats, rats, rabbits, and impotent fleas.
As most Rob stories, this one has a point: No man is an island…until he’s divorced.
After divorce we’re craggy rocks jutting out of the horizon between landmasses. Sometimes well-intentioned seal clubbers land and change our habitat, when we’re most susceptible. Other times we convulse and shake until everything that defined us as married falls away, leaving a new heated magma shape, not like the old one atoll.
The problem is that in our violent rebirth we destroy the delicate balance that makes us who we are. We’re not destroying our insignificant other, we’re pillaging the person we spent years perfecting.
Divorce is difficult. It’s natural to want to shake things up, but sometimes it’s important to be island stoic and wait out the plunder so that we can save ourselves. Don’t throw out the indigenous birds with the rat poo by introducing new predators.
It’s better to take stand on who you are rather than leaping to knee-jerk solutions. We all have good and bad, and I’m all about bettering myself, but not at the cost of things that make me fun for sailors. I still want to be a colorful place to club seals.
“Hello Sailor!”
And when the waters are rough, I like to know that people can find shelter. I wouldn’t throw that out to spite MyEx, no matter how turbulent things got. I’ve waited things out, and I like the island paradise that’s left.
“I name this island ‘Rob!’”
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