We think of our current times as stable, although history is quick to teach us otherwise. The modern world is a transient place, boundaries shrink and expand – on the east coast of England, the government is reportedly considering plans to abandon settlements that are simply too expensive to protect from flooding (have the beavers had a shot at it yet?). Imagine running submarine tours of the abandoned towns in 30 years time. That’s nature. The government claims that this report is not true, but that it has a policy of ‘sustainable protection’ – if that’s not a phrase that has some flex in it, we don’t know what is.
Belgium, meanwhile, has been without a government for more than 150 days, markedly longer than the last suspension in 1988. Polls in France have indicated that the Gauls would be prepared to absorb the poorer, French-speaking south (Wallonia) into the nation, thus moving it out of Departement 99 – and one suspects that Tsarkozy would like nothing better than to expand his territorial reach. Does this mean that the Netherlands would absorb the richer north? It seems more likely to stand on its own. That’s people.
Meanwhile, in Germany, a village teeters on the brink of crisis. The hamlet of Obereichstaett is facing down a horde of rampaging millipedes with its very own foot-high wall (complete with lip – the beavers could’ve done that in no time, for a tonne of fish). This is not a one-off occurrence. The invading creatures haunt the locals’ thoughts, and brought the local rail network to a standstill in 1900 by covering the tracks, making them too slippy for trains to function. That’s nature again: at least, the horror movie version.
Where are these millipedes coming from? Where do they go, those that aren’t squished by trains? Is this the millipede equivalent of visiting Mecca? One can only imagine the scenes when supplies have to be let through access points on the wall – heavily-armed SWAT squads dousing the wriggling villains with liquid nitrogen.
On that note, animal lovers may be troubled to learn of attacks perpetrated by ‘rabid otters‘ in Florida. What has the world come to? Perhaps the pair in this video have split up and gone on the rampage.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 