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Satire. Sarcasm. An attempt at a letter from the Earth. Needs some more editing. [548 words]

Pesky Tenants

09.15.2009

The worst thing that ever happened to me was humankind. Never have I had worse tenants.

Humans used to be decent tenants. They lived more in harmony with their environment, or at least had less impact on it. Even when they formed major settlements, I could simply whip up an earthquake or some other ‘natural disaster’ and they'd be manageable again. This lasted for millions of years.

It started to go downhill a couple centuries ago, when the smokestacks first started appearing on the large buildings, spewing soot. This really seemed to encourage the humans. They doubled their population in short order and spread to every corner of the globe. Sometime around 1950 I nodded off, and awake now to seven billion of them, twice as many yet again.

They aren’t even good neighbors. Just while I napped, they eradicated over half a million species of plant and animal life. They obviously show zero concern for their fellow tenants, completely disrespectful. They kill them; sometimes for food, sometimes just because. The ones they don't kill outright, they pollute to death by destroying their habitat.

They are everywhere! The highest peak, to the coldest tundra, to the harshest desert, there’s nowhere they won’t expand. They figure out how to eat something nearby and next, buildings pop up, then infrastructure and inevitably more destruction. They mine for metals to make their ‘machines’ and drill for ‘oil’ to power them. I can feel them poking and prodding, digging into my scalp. The headaches are murder.

Their machines fly around exhaling pollution on the ground, sea and air. They build massive industries which poison even more. They brutally slash down thousands of acres of trees every day. At the last Solar System meeting, the Sun was laughing out loud about my skimpy ozone layer. She was plotting all kinds of mean things. Things that would quickly make human damage seem trivial.

I don’t want to look like Mars; red isn’t my color.

I've tried everything to be rid of them, from volcanoes to flooding, droughts to famine, pestilence to plague. None of the old tricks work. It's not like they have a strong survival instinct. They're constantly trying to kill either one another or themselves. They spend enormous amounts of energy inventing more effective technologies of death. They’re constantly committing genocide; they just never finish the job. On the positive side, they’re now well into the Nuclear age and global warming has already begun. If left to their own devices, they'll wipe themselves out eventually.

The only question is whether I can avoid the same fate. Deforestation, industrial waste, green-house gases, strip mining, the brutal devastation of my oceans; it’s just plain rude. Like a virus destroying its host, they steadily gobble up everything in their path. They leave behind waste, pollution and destruction. Even if they vanished tomorrow, it’ll take eons to get their stench off of me. Have you ever tried digesting nuclear waste; it’s really quite nasty.

Makes me wish for the good old days when all I had to worry about were the dinosaurs. Now, those were good tenants. They didn't leave a mess and became extinct. If only I could be so lucky with humans.

The Earth

Thanks For Reading!

I'm always humbled when someone like you spends their valuable time reading something I scribbled. Thanks much.

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