Nature on the move

Another thing that puzzles me is those rectangular green patches that appear in that photo of the Mackinac Bridge.

I must have missed something again.  What photo are you talking about?  The rectangular green patches sound intriguing.

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Nature is a tough mother.

No kidding!  Have you seen the recent videos of that Hawaiian volcano event?  Big cracks opening up in the ground and lava spewing out, shooting thirty feet or more into the air.  Very liquid lava too, none of this slow and leisurely flow along the ground.  This is not the kind of thing that a home owner can easily deal with and I don't think the volcanic activity will be ending any time soon.  Not having to worry about the ground opening up beneath your feet and getting burnt to crisp by molten lava is another benefit of living in the Heartland, don't you think?

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I read one of those articles from the National Geographic site about plastic in the ocean; it's worse than I thought.  And a few days ago I read that plastic particles were found in the water at Point Nemo, the most remote spot in the world's oceans.  Point Nemo is in the South Pacific, a thousand miles from the nearest island and doesn't get much boat traffic.  The plastic was found in water samples taken by sailors participating in the Volvo Ocean Race, which goes around the world.  I don't think they found a lot, but even so, a little is too much in the most remote location on the planet.

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We have zebra mussels at this end of Lake Michigan and it was a hot topic a few years ago but not too much recently.  Maybe the local fish have developed an appetite for them and they are no longer clogging water intake pipes.  That would be nice.  We have the round goby too but it hasn't been in the news lately as far as I know.

The biggest threat lately is the Bighead Asian Carp, a voracious critter that has been coming up through the rivers feeding Lake Michigan.  They get pretty big and a passing boat will cause them to leap about five feet into the air.  Keeping those carp out of the lake have been successful so far, but in time they will get there, I fear, and a lot of native species will be wiped out.  They're supposed to be good eating though, which isn't much of a silver lining when you think about it.

The round goby, zebra mussels, and the Asian carp are all invasive species, the inevitable result of modern global trade.  I read that they came from the bilge tanks of freighters.  I'm not sure about that but I doubt they are discarded pets like those pythons and anacondas found in Florida.

We have a lot of invasive species in the US but I haven't heard much about invasive species from the US.  The only one I've read about is the gray squirrel which is driving out Britain's beloved red squirrels.  I don't know how they got there; squirrels seem to be unlikely stowaways.  Maybe it's sabotage, an early effort to test the feasibility of getting snakes back into Ireland.  Why anyone would want to do such a thing is beyond me but these are weird times and not much surprises me any more.