Mrs. Robin is back this year--we assume it's the same mom--and she's been sitting on the nest for a couple of weeks or so now. We haven't seen any little heads sticking up yet, but we expect to see them any day now. I went out to check on her this morning, and she was there, her nest no worse for wear. So the storms apparently will not disrupt the flight training that we've been looking forward to for weeks now.
The storm actually did us one favor. We had a dead tree in our backyard, probably in bad shape because it's too close to a neighboring pine tree, and it's been leaning for a while. The winds were enough to knock it to the ground, where it landed without doing any damage. So we even lucked out on that front.
Our power was out for about four hours, and our Internet service was interrupted a time or two. That, plus the fact we were expecting to have to run to the basement at any moment, is the reason the world was not treated to a Legal Schnauzer post yesterday. So we had to endure nothing more than minor inconveniences. As for the lack of a Schnauzer post . . . well, some people might welcome more storms if they knew that would be one of the aftereffects.
Do I have anything profound to say after our brush with Mother Nature's wrath? Well, if you use the word "profound" loosely, it might be this: It seems that most suffering has one of three causes--natural events, accidents, and human meanness.
Storms, earthquakes, and other natural events always will be with us--but man has become remarkably adept at limiting their damage. Thanks to modern weather forecasting and communications techniques, we had plenty of advanced warning about yesterday's storms. Without that, I'm guessing the death total would have been at least twice as large.
Accidents also will always be with us. As long as there are humans, there will be mistakes and screw ups caused by our inattention and misjudgments. But we also have learned to limit their damage. Scientists study these things and have made significant strides in figuring how how to avoid injuries caused by accidents. Here in Birmingham, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has an Injury Control Research Center. On the national level, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta has a center devoted to injury control.
But what about human meanness? Are we incapable of coming to grips with that, limiting the havoc it wreaks? I'm not optimistic about that one. This blog chronicles the actions of numerous judges, lawyers, and individuals who have acted corruptly in our justice system, heaping major damage on their fellow human travelers. Like Mrs. Schnauzer and me, quite a few of these bad actors probably were fortunate to escape major damage in yesterday's storms. Did that cause any of them to stop for a moment, count their blessings, and vow to change their ways? I doubt it. Were many of them right back to their underhanded ways this morning? Probably so.
This just adds to the body of evidence that convinces me many animals are smarter than--and closer to God than--many humans. Consider our kitty kats. From November through February, the coldest months in Alabama, they sleep with us almost every night--curled up together in a furry clump at the foot of our bed. With last night being near the end of April, we didn't look for them to join us in bed. And Chloe, who is a big girl with an extra heavy coat, did find somewhere else to bunk down for the night; she apparently didn't need to be surrounded by extra body heat.
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