Just when you thought it was safe….

Mother Nature is a mean mother

One of the postulates of Murphy’s Law (which tells us everything that can go wrong will go wrong) is that Mother Nature is a mean mother. The actual word is not appropriate for family readership.

I have been thinking about that a lot when I read of the increasing threat to us humans from nature’s not so nice creatures like rabid skunks, rabid raccoons, squirrels and feral cats who hang around looking for handouts and a warm place to sleep and breed.

By far the most threatening and intrusive are the always hungry coyotes who came to Cape Cod unbidden and found, with no natural predators to keep them in line, a place where they can grow and prosper. Coyote apologists like the wild animals, it seems, more than they do the human species. Despite evidence they are traveling in packs killing pets—large and small- and attacking children and even adults, the coyote has its friends who warn us to stay inside rather than disturb the predatory cousin of the dog.

I have friends whose children were terrified by a coyote some years back in the first reported incident of an attack on humans. The little boy was out in his yard when the coyote struck causing his little sister to start screaming and his mother to throw caution to the winds and drive the beast away from her little ones. The attack traumatized the boy who to this day is wary of anything that even looks like a coyote.

So animal lovers and animal control officers advise us to stay inside, not to feed the birds, not to allow our pets to wander in our own backyards lest they become a meal for a coyote pack. Don’t offend the offensive animals. If they are rabid they will go after anybody and anything that moves. That is also true for the skunks whom I used to consider friends of the earth because they dug up the lawn to feast on grubs.

Now I am putting up wire fencing to try to keep them and other critters out of our yard where our grandchildren play with their friends and where we like to sit in the heat of the day and the cool of the evening.

We are warned over and over again that the backyard may be where the animals attack. We already know that an unguarded front yard is off-limits for little kids because some sick pedophile may be on the prowl to snatch somebody’s unguarded child. So we have to watch out front and back.

Or we have to be content to stay indoors.

Lo and behold! Now comes a news report in the Cape Cod Times by staff writer Joe Heitz that by staying inside we may be killing ourselves and poisoning our children and grandchildren. Huh? That’s right.

A study by Clean Production Action which studied 70 homes nationwide (including one in East Falmouth here on Cape Cod) indicates that chemicals and toxins are building up in our homes. Dust which we forever chase with brooms, dust cloths, mops and vacs may be tainted, they say “with hazardous chemicals".

Among the alleged toxins is DDT (which has been banned since the 1960s). DDT showed up in the dust of “65 percent of the homes tested”. That from a senior scare specialist from the Silent Spring Institute. Imagine that. DDT showed up in this "massive" nationwide “scientific” study in 4.5 homes. We are also told that there are toxic chemicals in cosmetics, detergents and plastics which could all drive up the incidence of asthma cases, cancer rates and children with learning disabilities.

This is incredible news! Or should we say it is not credible news but advocates looking for grants to continue their bogus research to protect the great unwashed from ourselves.

So we are being told to stay out of our backyards for fear of ferocious animals that might attack any time; we are warned not to let little kids play in our front yards because some neighborhood pervert might grab them and now we are told not to stay indoors because we might get contaminated from toxic dust.

What is a body to do?