A friend and I, up in tropical Queensland on holiday - land of my birth. We are being buzzed by flies large enough to need Air Traffic Control, and slowly being drained of blood by the clouds of mozzies. The following conversation does not reflect any of my actual views. It was borne of frustration and humour.
Me: -slap- Hey, do we need flies for anything? Like, do they perform a vital role in the ecosystem or something?
Friend (amused): Yeah, I think they do.
Me: Soo… I’m _not_ allowed to plot their extinction?
Friend: No plotting species extinctions. I think that’s a valid blanket rule.
Me: -slap- What about mozzies, do we need mozzies for anything? I mean, unlike flies who are mostly just -slap- annoyances, mozzies carry malaria and denghue and ross river fevers and stuff - are the benefits they provide in their -slap- ecosystem role outweighed be being probably the most dangerous macroscopic animal on the planet, gram for gram?
Friend: I thought we had this rule.
Me: Aww… c’mon, just one little extinction? They’d hardly even notice, they have like -slap- five synapses.
Friend: No. I refer you to the rule.
Me: Not fair. Our common ancestors got to make mammoths and sabretooths and all these other cool things extinct, all I’m asking for is one family of -slap- - _freaking annoying_ - insects. :poke tongue and quickly retract it lest it become a landing pad for insects:
Friend: And wouldn’t you prefer it if you could see some of those species?
Me: You’re only saying this because -slap- they’re mostly ignoring you. I forgot how bad it is here, that’s the only reason you could talk me into this - I was quite fine in _sub_-tropical areas, thankyouverymuch. AH! Goddammit that was a horsefly!(Sorry if that was too long)
[AN: For Americans and other non-Australians, the horseflies we get here are not limited to flies that bother horses. We have the ones you could plausibly fit with a saddle and tack. They’re vicious bastards that can get to over an inch long and feature bright yellow pinstripes from head to tail. They’re not venomous, per se, but they can make you regret your place in life and their place on your leg for as long as two hours. And, according to this article, yes we do need mozzies.]
The influence of man, one author said, is so widespread that he doesn’t notice he was never there.
To put it in more scientifically accurate terms: introduce humans to an environment and watch the trophic cascade happen.
The first year of Wiwazheer was an education in trophic cascades for everyone.
To make room for the colony’s hobbit-holes and Central’s Anthill science complex, large volumes of trees, shrubs and other plant life had to go. There was loads of it elsewhere, of course. Part of the reason why it took six months to clear it all was that everyone was making absolutely certain that they weren’t causing an extinction by accident.
But what they did do, Susan noted, was cause a very localised deforestation, rendering entire populations of birds, bugs, lizards and amphibians homeless. Very few of them died for science, for which Susan was secretly glad.
And where the predators are away, the prey will play. Which, from a human point of view, lead to clouds upon clouds of locally-spawned insects. The air was sometimes so thick with them that it was hard to tell night from day.
And some of them were the kind of insects that no human would miss. The blood-suckers, the stingers, and the ones that loved you like a long-lost sibling. And, of course, the ones that liked to breed inside food.
Susan could only watch as her parents and all the other adults donned face masks and eye goggles and just soldiered on through the thick, living blizzard made of billions of winged bodies.
But the plague of bugs was relatively short-lived. Birds, lizards and amphibians soon caught on that there was a feast available in the burgeoning expanse of Wiwazheer. They were very un-used to humans and didn’t know what these balding, upright apes could have meant to their species. Some of the littler kids lined the windows and laughed at how the birds and other insectivorous species would casually use humans as a roosting spot before launching towards another cloud of bugs.
For Susan, it meant that her parents were no longer covered in bug bites at interviews through the safety partition. They were covered in insectivore crap instead.
“Do we really need to let the ecology settle?” Susan begged. “Look at you. You just got over the bug bites and you’re covered in potential pathogens.”
“We came here with the ideal of living with the ecology, not fighting against it,” said Momma.
"We’re already doing enough damage by clearing this much forest,” added Dad. “The rest is just the critters being themselves. You can’t hate them for that.”
It was a hard lesson to learn, she knew. Humans were used to eliminating that which annoyed them. Or taming it to the point where it was unrecognisable as the original species.
But it was a lesson she took to heart. And why she fought so hard against her instincts when she first saw the image of a Numidid on Doctor Theresa’s screens. And why, when she saw one in person for the first time, told hir to move away for hir own safety.
And why, in the long run, she became Ambassador.
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