As for the oaks, every few years the White Oaks (Quercus alba) display subtle but stunning fall leaf colors, consisting of a range of shades from rose-purple to grayish-violet-purple. I wish it happened more often!

Yes, we will bide while they gnash this out. But I’d love to chat about it! The late Pleistocene fauna is stupendous. What a thing to go missing! It is beyond me to grasp the riches. Have you ever cataloged all the fauna so recently gone missing from Plummer’s Hollow? Overkill author Martin stresses that you’re missing half the picture of the present if you don’t visualize the missing fauna. It seems animals must have been so very thick upon the land. Have you seen the lists? Your woods must have been very different then. Imagine that man speared all of this into oblivion! I think it is all too easy to under-appreciate the diversity, the spread, the sheer numbers, the vitality of those lost beasts. Martin’s Overkill dwells the possibility of a dodo-like lack of fear of man. It is easy to see the susceptibility of a giant ground sloth to the novelty of a spear cast from a distance, but it is hard to imagine the same thing pertaining to horses, camels, elk, moose, and most of all a mountain goat, all of which were habituated to pursuit by predators. A hare went extinct as well. I’m curious if other not-so-megafauna perished as well. One research does say that populations of man boomed on the great plains during and following the comet impact, but this is in opposition the the widespread sudden decline in human population. When populations did return, it was a new culture, a new cruder sprear point and the Clovis fluted point was gone.

It seems established that there was a honkin’ big impact, either into the ice sheet or exploding above the earth, and widespread fire. Cataclysmic melting of the ice sheet is not proven, but it is fun to imagine and provides a fine explanation for the formation of drumlins. Did you know about the Carolina Bays?
What fun to learn of them. And all that radiation, and bombardments of ultra-high sped pellets — what a way to go! I love the black algal mat — I’m going on about the Firestone book, by the way. To seal the deal he and other authors bring in Native American creation myths of flood, falling stars and fire as eyewitness accounts, though their survival would contradict the theory of the decimation of the human populace. Frankly he runs away with his hypothesis, but what prick of caution to learn that certain people’s have a myth of the sky being made of stone. Ouch! Supernovae hurt.

David – Not quite true – a lot of things survive simply from our malign neglect – but we’re approaching that point with frightening speed.

rr – I’ve met you, and I can vouch for the fact that you’re not grotesquely shaped. Colorful, yes.

It is and it isn’t our fault. Personally, I blame the paleolithic predators who were so wimpy as to let a bunch of hairless bipeds armed only with spears wipe them out. Now governments, corporations and elites have taken their place, and we continue to respond to their depredations as most prey species would: with elevated levels of stress and reproductive activity.