A Morning Walk

A Morning Walk

(March 19^th, 2020)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

Note:  Since this essay was penned, irrefutable evidence has arisen indicating certain species of mammals can indeed become infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus, including dogs, cats, minks, and a handful of others.  That being said, animals other than human beings infected with the COVID-19 variant of a coronavirus are largely asymptomatic, are not known to die from its complications, and do not transmit the pathogen to Homo sapiens.

                Perhaps the one thing most striking about this hideous coronavirus pandemic we earthlings are presently facing is the fact it is peculiarly a human problem.  Nothing else on Earth is truly affected by it or adversely impacted by it.  The world as we know it moves on relentlessly independent of the existential risk the tiny coronavirus poses to every human being on the face of this planet.  The world we live in looks no different, feels no different, sounds no different, smells no different, IS no different in any appreciable manner from before…..other than the frightening, indisputable fact there is currently a Lilliputian predator “out there” that wasn’t present in its mutated, human-assailing form as recently as fifteen weeks ago, and that coldblooded little bastard is now busy stalking every Homo sapiens on Earth.  In that regard, our world—our HUMAN world, that is—is utterly unrecognizable from the one of November, 2019; that place now seems a billion miles away.  We are living in a totally different environment than before, no question, but the rest of the creatures that share this small blue planet on the outer fringe of the Milky Way galaxy are not.  Just one thirty minute walk this morning down to the “T” at the end of the gravel road my wife Carla and I live on in extreme southeastern Minnesota confirms this fact.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                As I step out the front door of our split-entry, Wedgewood-hued house on a drizzly morning, a handful of robins—recently returned from their southern winter haunts—go hop-hop-hopping about on the front lawn of our modest estate in pursuit of dumb, oblivious nightcrawlers and obviously do not sense there is anything significantly different about this planet of ours.  The ones that aren’t hunting—they are temporarily resting in nearby trees and unwittingly offering the slimy subterranean denizens that frequent our estate a reprieve from death if the angleworms cannily choose to hastily avail themselves of said—chide me with their distinctive, strident trills as though I am the trespasser and nervy usurper on THEIR recently reclaimed territory.  The gall of those sassy birds!  The red-breasted animals are dapper and sanguine this time of year—happy to have escaped their crowded southern aviaries and eager to build nests so the female can immediately begin laying a clutch of eggs to hatch and thereby perpetuate their species.  Nothing markedly more complicated to their lives than that—eating and propagating and dodging any predators that might target them or their offspring.  The robins do not fear—nor are they even aware of—the grisly coronavirus crisis facing our cowering human population, and why should they?  All the robins of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members on the organic food chain.  Make no mistake no about it:  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not care one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                The pair of bluejays I can hear but not see squawking their signature raucous warning calls from the top of a nearby spruce tree as I shuffle out of our yard do not know there is a coronavirus crisis raging across the face of the planet.  Unlike the aforementioned robins, uber-hardy bluejays stay all winter in southeastern Minnesota and therefore were here when the coronavirus decided to migrate not unlike a multitude of those birds’ cousins and subsequently expand its range into North America from far-off Asia, at which point it instantly became a Western Hemisphere concern back in January of this year.  But the boisterous, blue-tufted birds had far more important things to do at that time, namely lurk around the feeders I have hanging on the back deck of our house and fight like the dickens to survive a Mephistophelian Minnesota winter in order that the females of their species–same as the robins–could lay eggs in the spring and hatch a brood of squawking little sapphire squabs to assure a continuation of their unique DNA lineage.  All the bluejays of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members on the organic food chain.  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not care one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                Approximately one mile down the road in a westerly direction from our two-acre homestead I take especial note of two mounds of freshly dug soil in the roadside ditch.  Pocket gophers are fully out of their winter hibernation and busy digging tunnels again!  This is of particular interest to me owing to two separate observations:  Pocket gophers beginning to dig in the muddy soil is one of the surest and truest signs of spring, and it also means the frost from last winter has retreated sufficiently out of the ground to enable the ugly little rodents to commence their new round of home-building.  Either way, this is a good and joyous sign in a normal year—which obviously the current edition is not–but do those same pocket gophers that spend ninety five percent of their time underground know there is a coronavirus pandemic racing across the face of the Earth—threatening the health and much less frequently the life of every human being alive? 

No, of course not, the “stupid” pocket gophers neither know nor care about this.  Their species is not being threatened by a grave health threat of any kind if you exclude ornery famers who despise and oftentimes trap them, thus their roster of priorities is markedly different from the current human one:  Digging new underground lodges in tandem with a virgin network of tunnels to connect same, restoring their caches of food which were largely depleted over the course of the just-completed winter, copulating whenever possible to ensure that a new brood of youthful pocket gophers will be born in time to mature over the summer months and be responsible, fully capable adults when next winter rolls around, and staying on the lookout for opportunistic coyotes that may come snooping around at the same time a mature gopher may be making one of its rare forays above ground after dark.  All the pocket gophers of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain.  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                I ultimately made it up to that “T” intersection with Robinson Creek Road (A fancy misnomer for merely one more gravel township road, this one admittedly slightly wider and more traveled than the one I live on) and now I’m on my return jaunt home, making good time as I trudge along at a brisk pace in an easterly direction.  Not far past our neighbors to the west—the Meyerhofers—as I walk by a small draw which features a muddy waterway on the north side of the crushed rock road where gnarly underbrush and a few scrub trees have managed to escape the farmer’s plow and are now clustered protectively along a moist shallow ravine, I look down and take note of a bounty of deer tracks of all sizes in the wet muddy gravel on the shoulder of the township passageway.  Being an avid deer hunter, I automatically recognize this to be a natural funnel for deer coming from the south because not far to the north of the brushy draw a fenceline harboring still more opportunistic small trees manifests, and whitetail deer—sublimely shy, wary mammals by instinct—are drawn like opposite poles of a magnet to naturally protected travel lanes wherever and whenever they may exist.  But do you think these uber-vigilant deer are worrying about the coronavirus pandemic which is currently the foremost thought on virtually every human being’s mind who lives on our shared planet? 

No…..think again! 

Even if deer were aware of the coronavirus—which they undoubtedly are not—they would not give one good damn about such a thing inasmuch as it is a purely human problem with zero relevance to their own well-being.  In fact, deer are facing their own existential crisis in the form of Chronic Wasting Disease—an affliction weighing heavily on their numbers and physically embodied by a microscopic organism even more diminutive and organically stranger than a coronavirus called a prion—so why might you think the deer of the world would care that the human population they share the crust of this planet with—legions of whom go out in the fall of the year toting twenty-gauge shotguns complemented by Yeti coolers heaped full of beer…..and then attempt to murder as many of their cervid kind as possible in “only” a week’s time–is facing the highly unlikely prospect of species extinction?  Well, they don’t; they could not care less.  All the whitetail deer of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain.  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move to unite and quickly own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                Upon reaching my place of residence after finishing that brisk thirty-two minute morning jaunt, I still have one item of business to accomplish before stepping inside Carla’s and my house to eat breakfast.  Some reckless motorist accidentally hit and killed a skunk (Yes, redundant language, I know; what person in their right mind would purposefully hit a skunk and in the process stink their vehicle up for the next two weeks?!) on the road only about an eighth of a mile to the east of our place.  The air is waterlogged and heavy this morning, a strong breeze is blowing out of the east, and this combination of meteorological conditions means our two-acre property is receiving a powerful dose of skunk “redolence” for the indefinite time being.  I therefore stop to grab a small scoop shovel from the garage attached to our house and thereupon walk down the road in an easterly direction until I come face-to-face with the dead skunk lying in the middle of the road (Wasn’t there a vintage Rock n’ Roll song with that weird, albeit iconic, title back in the 1970s by one hit wonder Loudon Wainwright III??  Come to think of it, with a erudite name like that the guy was condemned to be a one hit wonder in the world of pop music!).  In any case, two things strike me immediately when I take the mandatory deep breath and look down at the stricken animal. 

First, the sheer size of the black-and-white varmint.  Skunks are naturally small mammals–and I have seen many a skunk in my day to use as accurate frames of reference–but the one I am staring at now is extremely large for its species; I whistle under my breath at its impressive stature.  Secondly, and more poignantly, it becomes immediately obvious this was a female skunk because the animal’s belly is grossly enlarged independent of the post-death bloating which naturally occurs in any deceased animal, belying a late-term pregnancy and doubtless a large batch of baby skunks soon to come from within that distended belly—a batch now needlessly aborted owing to an egregiously speeding driver. 

I say that because we all know skunks are not speed demons by nature and this skunk in particular could not have been moving very fast secondary to her third-trimester pregnancy, so whoever hit her—and I have a strong suspicion who that might be based on unsavory past experiences with a now-adult neighbor girl–should have had ample time to see the ambling rodent before inadvertently ending its life.  Let’s put it this way:  A deer abruptly shooting out from the shoulder of the road, skunks definitely are not!  And if this minor rant makes it sound like I am some kind of nutty skunk lover with a peculiar infatuation for the malodorous little animals, well,  I am not, but I nonetheless felt pity and remorse at being forced to witness any healthy creature have its life gruesomely ended right before it was due to give birth and extend the circle of life—ANY life, really, apart from those goddamned, lifestyle-altering coronaviruses which swooped down on mankind out of nowhere just months ago.

Anyway, I somewhat troublesomely scoop the oversized skunk up in the bowl of my dinky shovel and—after walking some distance to the east (I’m quite certain the neighboring Lilly family will graciously thank me for that!!)—throw it as far as I possibly can into a plowed field.  But as I do so, I wonder if this skunk was overcome with angst—right up until the fateful moment when the Grim Reaper carried it away—regarding the coronavirus scourge that is the prevailing, foremost thought on every human’s mind nowadays. 

And of course I know the answer to that question is an emphatic “No!!!”  Doubtless the stricken skunk had only one thought on her mind at the instant she was struck and killed, and that was simply finding the best place in the natural world to safely birth her large litter of kits and then conscientiously raise them through the upcoming summer so that all of them would be ready to accept the mantle of adulthood and full independence when late fall arrived.  That was almost certainly all she was thinking of at her moment of death–that, and probably where she was going to find her next meal to ensure both her own survival together with the survival of the  myriad progeny temporarily residing within her womb; both were of equal importance in her mind.  All the skunks of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain. The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move quickly to unite and own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                My walking for the morning is now complete.  Truth is, I even managed to squeeze in one necessary chore to this daily walking routine, the aforementioned disposal of that dead skunk before my wife or I would probably have somehow carelessly driven over the slain creature during a transitory episode of daydream-driven dementia while running an errand.  And as I re-enter our yard from the east and hear that same pair of bluejays from before squawking up in the treetops and as I intuitively smile at the robins gamboling about on our filthy-from-winter lawn in joyous pursuit of non-thinking earthworms and just take note of the fact that everything around me looks exactly the same as it did before the coronavirus pandemic became easily THE most compelling issue on every earthling’s mind in the early spring of 2020, I experience an epiphany and realize that we human beings constitute just one species of life on the surface of this Earth. 

That epiphany is further reinforced when Spartacus comes racing down to the end of our driveway to greet me.  Spartacus, you see, is Carla’s and my American Eskimo hybrid dog who is too skittish to take along on walks away from our property because he panics at the sight of any vehicle on the road and pursuantly scoots off chaotically just to get away from the motorized monster.  Spartacus is neither a smart dog nor a brave one, but he is extremely friendly and extremely loyal and those estimable qualities alone render him a cherished yard companion.  So, anyway, Spartacus comes running up to me as I access our acreage from the east and I ask him point-blank if he harbors grave concerns about the coronavirus pandemic currently bedeviling the human populace of the world. 

As expected, Spartacus shoots me a blank stare, but his tail continues to wag indefatigably throughout and his eyes sparkle like glistening diamonds purely at seeing me return to the premises following a short absence.  Spartacus obviously isn’t aware of any existential crisis facing mankind, nor would he give a roaring rip if he were to somehow find out such was the case, that is, with the exception of Carla and me—his regular food sources; he would surely miss us a lot if we were to somehow mysteriously disappear from the face of “our” planet!  And by extension, Spartacus is a reliable bellwether for his canine species.  All the dogs of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain. The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move quickly to unite and own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

 Although we Homo sapiens habitually feign superiority and near-godliness and infallibility and invincibility, it becomes abundantly clear the world would go on very smoothly and tranquilly if the entire human population was suddenly wiped off the face of the Earth.  We are not special; we are just one species among many.  The existential fear we are facing right now is the same one every species of animal has faced at one time or another throughout the eons since that first scarcely organic fish crawled out of the primordial soup of a prehistoric ocean and struggled mightily to breathe atmospheric air through its primitive gills until evolution gradually interceded and worked its adaptability magic.  We do not own special privileges on this planet, although large numbers of us for some reason believe such is the case.  The COVID-19 pandemic we are currently facing—this existential scourge, this mass assault on our exceptionalism, this ultimate wake-up call—should make every person alive step back for a moment to reconsider their place in the larger scheme of things. 

Almost every human being now alive will survive our generation’s personal existential scare, just like our ancient ancestors survived apocalyptic Ice Ages and massive volcanic eruptions and devastating meteor visitations and Bubonic Plague infestations and mindboggling earthquakes and God only knows however many other species-threatening calamities that have preyed upon humankind ever since our ancient human ancestors first ventured northward off the plains of eastern Africa toward the Middle East millions of years ago, but that is completely missing the point; that information is neither enlightening or germane. 

We should rather use this challenging moment in history as a reality check, to recognize and acknowledge our relative insignificance in the bigger order of things, and just stop for a moment to pay homage to the sobering fact that our collective exodus from the Universe as we know it would not even create a minor wrinkle in the infinite fabric of space/time.  We human beings are larger than life only in our own minds; no other living creature feels the same way about themselves, and the inanimate actors which populate our Universe obviously could not care less either.  We are not special; we are not exceptional; we are not indispensable; we are not irreplaceable.  Akin to spoiled, bleating children, we only feel that way while constantly reassuring each other about this false truth.

Yes, we only feel that way.

We only feel that way…..

Until the day comes when we no longer may be granted the privilege of surviving, let alone flourishing, on the surface of a planet and within the confines of a solar system and a galaxy which are wholly indifferent to our continued presence….

.

So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..