Disappearing but not Forgotten

The Musings of a Simple Country Man

By Hobie Morris

(Brookfield, NY – Sept. 2015) This true story happened about a year ago.  My starlet beautiful wife Lois and I were slowly driving home from the church service to our remote, bucolic and off the grid home four miles into the hills from the village of Brookfield.  It is a glorious, balmy sunny day with a vividly blue sky.  The scenery was spectacular in the waning days of summer.

Suddenly it happened.  It’s wedged against our old truck’s windshield wiper blade.  I quickly pull over and nimble Lois quickly got out and gently lifts it off the windshield and carries it across the road.  She puts it on top of a mailbox, where it soon flutters its wings and gracefully flies off.  We watch it settle on a fat milkweed pod along the farmer’s fence line.  This beautiful Monarch butterfly will soon begin its incredible journey of countless thousands of miles to its winter home west of Mexico City.

This year we haven’t seen one Monarch butterfly.   Each day we watched our extensive milkweed patch for their presence.  We were deeply saddened by their absence.  In the last 20 years the Monarch population has declined by nearly 90 percent.  What at one time was a roaring river has now diminished to a tiny trickle of these beautiful, fragile and endangered butterflies.  Like countless millions of war casualties all across the globe the Monarch butterfly, bees and other indispensable pollinators of our food supply are in a war they cannot win without our help.

Beautiful Lois and I are committed to help pass on to future generations our living but endangered legacy that is being wantonly destroyed by apathy, ignorance and greed.  Famous Harvard University biologist E. O. Wilson has said that specie destruction has reached a critical level that rivals the catastrophic extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  The extinction rate, according to Wilson, is one thousand times above normal.  Similar blue ribbon studies and scholars concur.

The tragedy of this is that it’s mankind who is knowingly determined to destroy forever our life sustaining biodiversity.  The incomparable Monarch butterfly would be just one of the casualties of this war.

The Monarch butterfly needs the milk weed to survive.  A well known weed killer produced by a company associated with Agent Orange is being extensively used to the tune of 185 million pounds annually.  One of the main ingredients in this toxic weed killer has been called by the World Health Organization a probably cancer causing agent.  Studies by the USDA and others have concluded that most of the highly toxic weed killers could be eliminated with no cut in food production.  The producers of these pesticides are apparently willing to exchange the milk weed and potential human health problems for massive profits.

Essential to human life are the pollinators of our food supply.  Two out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat are because of them.  We must proactively fight against this corporate greed as have already many European nations.  The disappearance of the Monarch butterfly would be a tragedy that must not be allowed to happen.  One thing you can do is to urge your Congress person to put the Monarch butterfly on the Endangered Species List.  You could also write Director Daniel Ashe of the US Fish and Wildlife Agency.

My gorgeous simple country wife Lois and I were deeply saddened when we didn’t see these Monarch butterflies.  They must be protected because they are so essential and enriching to all of us.

Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.