NOAH’S ARK

Night falls. Rab­bits teem from war­rens. The bark of a fox splits the still­ness like a scream. Boar usher their young out of the for­est into hazel and al­mond groves. Roe deer glide like spir­its through the vine­yards and trees. Bad­gers fol­low their noses. Pine martens and genets watch and wait on the branches. Mice, rats and shrews, sta­ple prey of the vi­cious weasel and other killers, slide through the grasses and shad­ows.

Watch­ing it all are the noc­tur­nal king and queen of the val­ley. The eagle owls.

It is the other king­dom of life and death, where we came from, stun­ning in its depth and truths, lit by the moon just out­side our doors or be­yond our streets. Yet some­how we do not know it, or are fright­ened of it, or we see it as an ir­rel­e­vance in a world where there is a stag­ger­ing im­bal­ance be­tween our power and nar­cis­sism and piti­ful rea­son­ing and re­spon­si­bil­ity.

This is their Earth as much as ours, for pity’s sake. From the waste dump oceans to the melt­ing sum­mits, to the blud­geoned lands of Ukraine and every­where we in­habit and every­thing we do to ac­cel­er­ate our­selves and this mir­a­cle rock to­wards an­other mass ex­tinc­tion.

As we in­dulge in ever-dark­en­ing in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tions (cage fight­ing, graphic vi­o­lence and mass mur­der mar­keted as video games) and gen­er­ally lay waste, life in ex­tra­or­di­nary bal­ance out there just be­yond the shut­ters and cur­tains goes on mostly un­ap­pre­ci­ated in all its glo­ri­ous, some­times gory de­tail.

Feed on this. Eagle owls are mon­ster preda­tors with a wingspan of up to two me­tres and vast talons. They will kill other owls, take a young fox or deer but dine mostly on rab­bits. They fear noth­ing. In a fight be­tween an owl and an eagle, bet on the owl. Bad­gers may have pretty poor black and white eye­sight, but their sense of smell is more than 700 times more pow­er­ful than a hu­mans. (What? Yep). A shrew, whose heart rate is more than 800 beats a minute, is (rel­a­tive to size) one of the most fe­ro­cious crea­tures on the planet. God, that is ge­nius.

Any­one with cu­rios­ity and/or re­spon­si­bil­ity (or a de­grad­ing thirst for blood or for the kick of their heart pump­ing) should step out of their com­fort zone and ex­pe­ri­ence a nat­ural shiver down the spine. But that is not going to hap­pen, is it? There is a de­spi­ca­ble preda­tor out there. Our­selves. Lock your doors and minds while species con­tinue to be­come ex­tinct and sea lev­els and tem­per­a­tures rise.

So, Plan B - start look­ing for arks, Noah style. I have found a few. For sev­eral decades now wise but un­sexy sci­en­tists have qui­etly but ex­pe­di­tiously been col­lect­ing and freez­ing an­i­mal tis­sue, cells and DNA. The Frozen Ark Con­sor­tium now con­sists of 22 mem­bers across the globe. Yes, the por­tents and re­al­i­ties are truly that dire.

Any­one smell cof­fee? Hello?