The Martians Are Coming

The January heat wave here in Southern California is probably an indicator of global warming. Catastrophic climate change is the long-range forecast. As for more immediate threats, when the hot Santa Ana winds blow like they’ve been blowing, forest fire is a distinct possibility. Then when the rains follow the fires, flooding and mudslides are likely in the burn areas. If that’s not enough peril for you, there’s always the San Andreas fault line which promises to deliver a major earthquake any minute, decade or century now.

For one glorious afternoon, however, I’m forgetting about impending disaster and environmental collapse. Carpe diem. I’m just enjoying the sunshine at the beach.

Today was a wonderful day in Ventura. Maybe once in ten walks on the beach I’ll get to see dolphins, and today they were especially close—-leaping out of the water, diving, flipping and splashing. To watch fellow mammals as agile and graceful at sea as the dolphins is to realize that swimming with such ease, passion and intensity is as remarkable and alien to us as the flight of birds. Being a dolphin or being a parrot suggests a world of animal feeling so far from our own sensorium that it might as well be on a different planet in a different galaxy. Yet, a million light years away or a hundred meters up in the sky or out to sea, sentient experience is as close to our essence as our own heartbeat. Dolphiness and parrothood are feeling, and all feeling creatures are our kin.

No one would be particularly surprised if the methane clouds reported recently over Mars turn out to be proof of extraterrestrial life. While the Martians are probably microbial, if and when we do find intelligent life in outer space, it will be like us: subjective. What else could it be but something to marvel at, like the dolphins, the brown pelicans and the parrots?



I watch the pelicans flying the coastline in groups of six. They are gorgeous and abundant, full of life. This year, however, they began to turn up dazed and moribund in parks and on suburban lawns. Since they are very sensitive and were once on the verge of DDT-induced extinction, scientists suspected poisoning, exposure to some environmental toxin. But it now appears they were terminally debilitated by a unusually intense winter storm on their way south.

We can’t guarantee the safety of pelicans in the wild to the extent we can protect our companion animals at home. A safe environment for Shanti may protect him from many hazards, but he can’t fly free. Flight, even in a controlled environment, might decrease his security. Inside he’ll have glass, stove tops and ceiling fans to contend with; outside there are hawks, the elements and cruel homo sapiens.

Shanti, who came into my life with flight feathers clipped, has made me think deeply about a bird’s right to fly. Can I clip him again when the feathers grow back? I'm undecided.

I watch the seagulls hover in the warm breeze and I wonder.

Note: The video of swimming dolphins and pelicans flying above was actually taken in Ventura (not by me; I found it via YouTube)