Some stories stick with you a really long time. My freshman year at college (1975) I was assigned to read a collection of short stories called The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas. The book cost $1.75 ($13 today on Amazon) and it had just been published the year before. I kept it all these years because of one story, “Death Out In the Open.” The subtitle of the book is “Notes of a Biology Watcher” and in Death, Thomas wrote about something so obvious, I wondered why I had not ever noticed myself. The chapter reflects on the simple truth that most of the dead animals we see are on a highway, or have met their demise in some other interaction with humans. I spend a lot of time in the forests, and I have never seen a dead animal in nature! It is the nature of animals to die alone, off somewhere, hidden. If an animal happens to meet an untimely end out in the open, its kin carry the body to some inexplicably suitable location. Nature then consumes every part of the dead creature. I have only rarely even found bones in the woods. I have many squirrels, chipmunks and birds in my yard – and not one dead one in 15 years.
This past week, at least 1,000 fish died ‘out in public’ because of a human interaction. A truck on Rt. 78 crashed, spilling its load and catching on fire. The fire melted bottles of Tide laundry soap which was then washed down a stormwater sewer by response crews putting water on the fire. The sewer dumped into a brook, causing the fish kill. The brook will be ‘dead’ for a while. Gratefully, because of rain all week, flows were high, creating beneficial dilution before meeting up with the Musconetcong River.
This past week, at least 1,000 fish died ‘out in public’ because of a human interaction. A truck on Rt. 78 crashed, spilling its load and catching on fire. The fire melted bottles of Tide laundry soap which was then washed down a stormwater sewer by response crews putting water on the fire. The sewer dumped into a brook, causing the fish kill. The brook will be ‘dead’ for a while. Gratefully, because of rain all week, flows were high, creating beneficial dilution before meeting up with the Musconetcong River.