It was the autumn of life. A time of change. A time when the green lushness of summer gave way to the beauty of leaves bursting into the earthy tones as trees revealed, for just a brief interval, their true colors: yellow, orange, red, the rare touch of purple shaded in the deepest red hues. A last blast of the exuberance of life before the long death of winter.
We never despaired before. The deep freeze of winter always gave way to the rebirth of spring. Leaves put on their photosynthesizing work clothes. Life got back to normal.
It would not this time.
The dominate species of the planet, the one who claimed “divine right” to control the planet as they saw fit, saw fit to rape the planet, to remove resources willy nilly; to poison the land; to genetically alter the plants and animals in order to make more profits. But that alteration slowly poisoned the population and led life’s smallest creature, bacteria and viruses, to become so immune to all those poisons that we could no longer control them. They controlled us.
In the process, we dumped so much of our wastes into the air and water, they became unsafe to breathe and drink. We taught the sun how to beat down even harder, to burn the life out of our planet. When the last ice on the planet melted, taking with it countless innocent species who shared the planet, the fate of the world was sealed.
The arrogance of humans caused their own death. And to make sure our “accomplishments” are remembered (by whom, I’m not sure) we took most of the rest of life on our planet with us.
Venimus. Vidimus. Vicimus. Amisimus.
We came. We saw. We conquered. We lost.