I wonder about extinct animals like the Wooly Mammoths as they may have been at the beginning of the Ice Age some 50,000 years ago.
Some were probably thinking:
“Golly, it’s sure chilly this year! I’d better grow a shaggy coat!”
And then thinking: "Oh no, surely next year will be better!"
But it wasn't better. And now we can visit the remains of these extinct animals — dug from once-frozen earth -- in museums!
I wonder — given Ebola, and HIV, etc. — if we are entering a new age of deadly viruses.
We developed protection from some. Smallpox is just one example. And hopefully some of the vaccines being developed today will offer the world relief from COVID-19.
But I can’t shake this “Gary Larson Far Side” type of image of a group of little viruses sitting in their virus school with their teacher (also a virus) explaining that there was a time when enormous creatures called “human beings” lived on earth and how they assailed us but how we prevailed!
"How scary!" the little viruses would cry.
“But don’t we need human or other animal hosts in order to survive?" they would ask. "What if they become extinct?"
“Don’t worry,” their virus teacher would reassure them. “We left just enough humans and other animals for that!”
See what happens during isolation and social distancing when the imagination runs riot?!
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