A Tale of Quail and Cottontail

My family was blessed to lived in a veritable garden of Eden for twenty years.  When we first moved there, the three-acre lot was almost bare save three oak trees and some sagebrush.  My wife is a Green Thumb.  In a few short years we had hundreds of trees, many of them fruiting, exotic flowering plants and a vegetable garden that fed many more than us.

Our first cohabitants were ants and spiders - they were the tough survivors from a lengthy drought. Over time as the edible greenery flourished, new species on foot and wing appeared steadily.  

Quail were one of the first waves of immigrants to the new promised land.  Quail are diligent and smart.  They quickly identify and appropriate all their desired food sources, set up nests under lush shrubs, and make a lot of chicks.  The Quail were so successful that their broods came to number almost twenty.  Imagine yourself as a parent with twenty newborns!

The Quail's success was also their sadness.  You see, we had five cats patrolling the property when not lounging on a favorite couch.  Some of the cats were very hip to the increase in number of chicks per adult Quail.  They would patiently wait in a blind near a frequented Quail Trail and happily pick off a straggling chick every now and again, until the brood had been reduced to a number the parents could defend.  Why  recall this?  The European Union is the Quail Family!  Mama France and Daddy Deutschland simply have too many wandering chicks to guard.  The evil Bond Vigilante Cats will never stop stalking the weakest and pouncing; it's simply too rewarding.  The Book of Quail suggests that the European Union may survive, but as a much smaller family.

The B Side o Nature's Record "Will It Go Round in Cycles?" is a short story about Rabbits.  For the first ten or so years in the Garden, there were very pesty ground squirrels but no rabbits.  The ground squirrels were the mammalian equivalent of the ants and spiders - tough, resilient drought survivors.  After the Garden developed to a truly lush state, we spotted a Cottontail once in awhile.  Then a few more.  Then a LOT more.  They took to our welcoming environment with true gusto.  For years, their numbers increased and increased.  Bunnies everywhere!  Then, in just a couple short years, the population essentially vanished.

Exponential or parabolic growth in anything historically ends with a crash thud.  Tulips, Stocks, Real Estate and Cottontail populations.  Today, global debt appears to be a terminal stage of exponential increase. The Bank of International Settlements' most-recent report showed global debt rising from $600 Trillion to more than $700 Trillion - in just six months!  Our wealth of at least the last twenty, no, thirty years has been based on a growing global debt bubble.  Of course, this bubble won't end like the Cottontail population.  Our politicians, economists and bankers are way too smart for that.  Silly Wabbits.