It was Like That When We Got here...

Cave Painting showing early man "cliff hunting"

Finally some good news for mankind. While we have been in the driver’s seat rushing quite a few species to extinction we caught a break on the mammoth rap. The story goes when we were all named Ugh or Og, liked our wenches freshly clubbed, and ate damn near anything we could find (if it wasn’t already busy eating us, so to speak) we drove pret’ near all the mammoths over cliffs so we could eat them, so to speak. Ok, none of the mammoth was wasted as the story goes, but I suspect that is revisionist history, made up so we wouldn’t feel bad about putting an end to an entire population of animals. “Og, its ok, we used every last mammoth scrap, they didn’t die in vain”.

Now it appears that while early man did hunt the living shit out of the mammoth, elk, and every other giant hairy vermin ridden Ice age animal, it looks as though the main reason they disappeared is because they were too stupid to come out of the weather. Sort of like people who insist on building below sea level in hurricane country. Unfortunately for the Mammoth it didn’t have a government to bail them out.

The details in the article I read were a bit vague on what troubles adapting to climate change the brutes (mammoths, not Louisianans) experienced, but at least Og wasn’t employing weapons of mass destruction. Mankind has the passenger pigeon, Dodo, and almost the spotted owl (particularly good on toast) merit badges pinned proudly on our chest. The extinction list is long and we should hang our heads, but they can no longer pin the mammoth mayhem on us.

It was bound to happen sooner or late anyway. Buffalo Bill would have been called Mammoth Mike; PETA would be tossing blood on women wearing mammoth fur coats – if they could get past the smell. Something the size of a small building with huge tusks is not something you want strolling around the town square so Mammoth Mike would pileup the carcasses to feed the railroad, future NASCAR enthusiasts would be out seeing how many they could “bag” in one day, and Clem from the Ozarks would be out there chasing them with a ladder trying to hump one.

Another Nature note, perhaps bad news for some of Nanuk’s fellow countrymen, they found a Polar Bear that had crossed with a Grizzly Bear. You take two of the meanest nastiest creatures on the North American continent and breed them, you are going to need Polar Bear Pete or Grizzly Gary to come on up and deal with the problem posthaste. That or spend a lot of time indoors…