Remember the Birds

Tara looks back on her childhood in the jungle

Created on Substack

What Tara remembered most about the jungle was the birds. Their beautiful and sometimes raucous calls. Their glorious plumage in vibrant colors, sometimes in hues unimaginable to those who had never seen them. She remembered breeding season, when she would see aerial mating dances, chicks in their nests, and fledglings taking their first flights.

She remembered the bright butterflies that graced the lazy river near her home, the lush rainforest overhanging its waters. She swam in that river, cooling off with her friends, floating, sometimes, with its current.

She remembered her family’s hard-scrabble life, though as a child she hadn’t felt it a burden. It was just life in her village. Everyone lived that way, and everyone helped one another. For all its difficulties, life had been good.

As she sat in her wheelchair, waiting for her assistant to bring her lunch, her mind, too cruel to let those memories lie, shifted to the aftermath. To the helplessness she had felt as the rich—the powerful—industrialists had inch by inch destroyed her beloved jungle.

It wasn’t just the development, though that alone would have eventually led to the same outcome. The losses had been slow at first, the build barely noticeable. But as the planet continued to warm and politicians elevated profit today over viability tomorrow, change, and not for the better, came faster and faster.

The devastation of Tara’s jungle had been swift at the end. No more birds. No more butterflies. No more trees No more village. Just a wasteland of death and destruction. The world’s ecosystem collapsed out from underneath its inhabitants.

Tara had long before left her village. She held a doctorate in environmental science. She had rung the warning bell loudly, along with her colleagues. No one had listened. And when they did begin to listen it was nearly too late.

She had joined the fight to elect politicians who would protect the Earth and future generations. She hadn’t known at the time that she would be alive to see the collapse. That her generation would face the consequences of industrialization and greed.

She hadn’t really believed they could fail. But money and lies swayed an easily led population. The wealthy, who would have remained so even had they let go of greed and focused on their world—their home—saw only greater profit.

And now, Tara, near the end of her long life, was one of the relatively few humans to have survived the collapse. Her skills—her knowledge—had made her valuable. She had been invited to one of the domes her enemies had constructed when they finally realized their folly. It was her job, along with so many other scientists whose warnings had been ignored, to find ways to restore Earth’s ecosystems.

Tara’s fight was nearly done. She understood this. Yet every day, she remained at her desk, wheelchair bound, researching, thinking, strategizing. She met with her colleagues, frantically researching a world cure which she would never see. Because she wanted her descendants to experience the birds.

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This story I wrote based on the image that appears with it. It’s one I created a while ago while experimenting with adding a psychedelic element to my prompts on Midjourney. This was one of the tamer images.

I’ve said before that I feel writers have a responsibility to, at least in some of our work, highlight important issues in the world. Whether we do that through a humorous story or a serious one, I think it’s important.

I truly don’t see how we, as a species, are going to get past the greed, hatred, and self-interest driving so many politicians right now to stop the Earth’s downward plummet. Not unless we collectively stand up and oust them.

We’re making our world angry (metaphorically), and if we don’t act now to make huge changes, it will purge itself of our infestation of its surface.

There is, in my opinion, no room for complacency. I think we all, in whatever way we are able, need to take responsibility. We need to stand up. To act. To not be silent or complicit.

It’s easy to feel helpless, or that we’re just one person. But collectively we are many. Collectively we can accomplish much. Start small. Do one thing. Then keep going.

Please leave a comment, but remember, there’s no room for hate on Eclectic Ink. This isn’t about politics. It’s about our Earth, and those in power, no matter what side of the aisle they support or sit on, who value money and power over people and our home.