Is Mother Nature Really Starting to Get Pissed Off? And Who's Paying the Price?

Or is it just my imagination?

A cougar had to be shot in downtown Sidney, British Columbia (here in Canada) the other night. Cougars are so dangerous (to humans and other prey) that the conservation officer was afraid to take any chances with tranquilizing and relocating it.

Strange orange-backed bees are attacking people here in my rural community. One young man I know couldn't see for days after a sting swelled his eye closed.

Rodents of all sizes are moving into residential neighbourhoods en masse. And coming out in daylight hours — a bad sign!

The deer are hanging out in the middle of the road. (As if to say, Hey, maybe this will slow those humans down.)

Our weather has gone all wonky. It's dark and dreary here in the middle of summer (which really hurts this week because I'm running my Nature Daycamp, though I suppose the upside is the complete lack of sunstroke possibility).

Alas, it's been crossing my mind lately that perhaps Mother Nature isn't going to take it all lying down. Maybe she's thinking, "Exterminate your species all you want, but you're not taking the rest of us."

I continue to scan the news on climate change and the whole situation is becoming quite surreal. It appears we are indeed trying to exterminate our own species. The United States Department of State Official Blog has this to say about the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years:

Here at the port of Djibouti, thousands of metric tons of food assistance are ready to be shipped as part of the U.S. response to the massive drought currently ravaging the Horn of Africa. USAID is mobilizing nutritious split peas, along with vitamin-fortified corn-soya blend and other commodities, from warehouses around the world to assist the more than 10 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia most affected by the drought.

The USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET) began warning of the possibility of this crisis as early as summer 2010. Today, it has developed into the region's worst drought since the 1950s. Consecutive seasons of poor rainfall have resulted in failed crops, dying livestock, and sky-high market prices -- the cost of staple cereals are 40 to 240 percent higher in some areas. Malnutrition has reached emergency levels: one out of every two Somali refugees arriving in Ethiopia and one out of every three arriving in Kenya is acutely malnourished.

Does anything jump out at you? Once again we are, with ever increasing finesse and detail, documenting the impacts of global climate disruption on the world's most vulnerable — but doing nothing to prevent these impacts. An early warning system for famines? Do these people not realize their foreshadowing? Do they not see that what is befalling these African nations serves as an omen for the future of our children here in "western" developed countries?