@futurebird the fact the Great Dying packed up the trilobites, who had weathered five previous mass extinctions, still gives me goosebumps

Nothing is immortal

@futurebird

Oh we're there. The number of bugs* has dropped from "clean after every trip" to "clean every other month."

*As measured on windshield after weekly moseys in the farmland.

@futurebird
No bugs -> no fruit or spices in year one.

@futurebird it doesn't get cold enough here for the ants to really go away. I do think there is a major shift going on as this last summer had many less birds. I expect to see a lot of adjustment from the usual behaviors as climate changes so much more quickly than flora and fauna

@futurebird My family participates in a back yard refuge program run by a friend. Making her suggested changes, year round water, not raking leaves, switching to bark mulch from xeriscape, letting things go to seed, etc.

We have seen a crazy increase in our bug community in just two years much to my wife's dismay. So many more flying, crawling and scurrying things about the house.

It gives me hope.

@futurebird when you put it like that, yikes 😬

@futurebird I remember reading somewhere that the dead wood in the forests near Chernobyl does not decay normally because the mold that should eat it did not survive the radiation.

@futurebird On Nextdoor, someone posted, "Am I crazy or are dead animals just…*around* longer? Like, it's not normal for a dead squirrel to still be identifiable after two weeks, right? Sorry for being gross, but normally after a week it's just a ratty bit of fur."

One commenter said she hadn't noticed dead animals, but that the ground beneath the crabapple tree in her backyard was a slimy mess of rotting fruit, that she hadn't seen anything like it in the 20 years she'd lived there. She wondered if it was the unusually warm and rainy autumn, or some kind of plant disease, or what.

Someone else speculated that perhaps the weather was also why they hadn't had any problems with ladybugs getting inside en masse, as they often did in the fall.

Kathy shrugged and kept scrolling. The next thread was a local business owner complaining about immigrants ruining the economy and costing him business because of…well, he wasn't quite clear. She pursed her lips and squinted at the vaguely familiar logo in the man's profile picture. It was "Bugs-B-Gone" Pest Control Services.

@futurebird I think it's terrifying that the number of flying insects may have dropped 75% since the 1950s.

@futurebird Somehow I heard about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring when I was a child - and every single spring since then (I am creeping up on 68) I worry until I see the leaves unfurl and the various insects begin to scurry on their own errands.

If the insects were gone I would assume it was The Rapture.

So this is why I rejoice when I see the ants again. When the bees return, and even maybe the mosquitos (some of them) and the shy beetles, and the gnats to tiny too name.