anadarko stormy night

so i'm sitting here looking out the window at a hummingbird.

it hovers, moves in for some breakfast, backs out, takes another look, goes back in. and so on.

and i'm thinking, "what an amazing and startling and beautiful adaptation. fast yet maneuverable. delicate and absurdly strong. nature does some nice work, doesn't she?"

and then i think, "wouldn't it be neat to dump a couple barrels of oil on that hummingbird? and all the flowers in our yard, while we're at it? after that, we could set the whole scene on fire."

that would be fun.

if you're BP. or halliburton. or the aptly named anadarko. they love that kind of spirit-obliterating overkill. why dump one barrel of oil on a hummingbird when you can dump two?

or two billion?

i'd be a little vexed, however, if hell's oil hounds wouldn't at least let us take a few photos of our newly and gloriously besludged homestead while it was still smoldering. i mean, if you're going to go to all the trouble of despoiling and defiling and de-lifing an ecosystem, no matter how large or small, why not take a little pride in your work?

inexplicably, that's what's happening on the gulf coast. anadarko (one of the hosts of the gala in the gulf) is scuttling away from its friends like a crab off a rotting sea turtle. they're refusing to help pay for damages, insisting BP is the reason for the goo-covered season.

BP says it is disappointed by the announcement and will evaluate its options about what to do next. "They have failed to live up to their obligations," BP spokesman Mark Salt said in a statement.

if you can see the incongruity of BP scolding anyone for failing to live up to obligations, perhaps you can appreciate the irony of sending Salt to bemoan BP's wounds.

but back to the hummingbird.

you know what'd be really fun? if the bird fought back. not in a global warming kind of way, which is gradual and imperceptible and totally unsatisfactory, justice-wise.

but in a "carrie" kind of way, in which nature, drenched and demeaned and debauched one time too many, just. plain. snaps.

in our little dramedy, we'd cut to wide shots of countless deepwater oil rigs all over the globe. without fanfare, all of them are sucked down in violent whirlpools, disappearing without a trace.

next, we'd cut to mid-shots of oil executives, sitting in obscenely plush board rooms, sipping black pearl brandy, laughing about "the little people." they spontaneously combust (the brandy, however, is spared).

at this point, we cut to a long shot of a massive sandstorm enveloping the athabasca oil sands. the project sign is broken off and comes to rest on top of a dune. the project itself is buried, impenetrably, forever.

the music builds as we see a horrifying, extreme close-up of dick cheney. his face gets increasingly red as he reads rolling online reports of the demise of his favorite hobby (after war profiteering and torture). his head explodes.

outside cheney's window a hummingbird appears, hovers briefly, then turns and flies away, toward a panoramic wide shot of the wyoming mountains at sunset.

dissolve to a medium close-up of the hummingbird, accompanied by the sound of a symphony of strings, flying high over the earth, surveying the beginnings of the healing.

fade to a clean, gauzy white.

the end.

* * * * *

yes, the fantasy would be fun. a lot more fun than the reality we're getting instead.

apropos nothing, this evening i saw an eagle flying low over our neighborhood.

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h/t to pete wung for the atlantic link.