Beavers and Cockroaches, in that order

Beavers alter their environment the second-most of any species.

Looking around, you can't help but notice that it's a fairly distant second.

And how they've won back to back NCAA baseball championships is beyond me.

But the way beavers alter their environment creates wonderful habitats for many other species, while the way we alter our environment destroys habitat for most species.

One species that we provide for is cockroaches. Most cockroach species thrive in tropical climates, but our heated buildings have allowed them to extend their habitat to thousands of cities and towns around the world.

A cliche is that cockroaches would be primary survivors of total nuclear war. Actually they'd largely perish along with us because while we've extended their habitat by heating buildings and the planet, nuclear destruction and winter (The solution to global warming!) would mean their outside and inside habitats would largely disappear.

(I'm referring primarily to the American cockroach most of us are familiar with; there are 3,500 species and the hardiest ones in the warmest locations would probably inherit the earth, since they're also meek.)

When I was the world's worst waiter in Steamboat Springs, Colorado I was putting a salad on a table full of people when a large crouton jumped ship and I stepped on it, making a large crunching sound that I had to explain somehow, so I said, "Cockroach."

When I moved back to Santa Monica a beautiful blonde (woman) was over at my apartment and she'd just made a large salad and when she opened a cabinet door above the counter a cockroach fell off and into her salad. Not so much a moveable feast as a moveable crouton.

And people wonder why I was a bachelor for most of my life.

I bring this up not only to gross out my sister and not only because I hope like you do that this is the last post about cockroaches, but also to point out how karma works. Make an inappropriate joke and six months later you lose a girlfriend.

Oh, and since humans are the cancer killing the host body of all life on earth, it would be appropriate for all animals and insects of all sizes to attack us every chance they get, and not just get our girlfriends to leave us.

When I walk out the door, squirrels should jump at me from every tree, fox, deer and dogs in our neighborhood should form packs to try to take me down.

When I lived in a 16-story dormitory in Moscow, Russia I turned the light on in the communal kitchen at 2 am and the floor and walls were moving with cockroaches. They should've all worked together to throw me out the window, and there were enough of them to do this.

Actually cockroaches do work together extremely well, as most insects do. Unlike humans, cockroaches are almost always cooperative and egalitarian.

Cockroaches have been around for 300 million years (maybe 15 minutes more or less), meaning that they've evolved over billions of generations.

Homo sapiens have been around 180,000 or so years, or for less than ten thousand generations.

If we're going to be around even one-thousandth as long as cockroaches, we have to learn to be egalitarian and to cooperate as they have.

And to eat the donut crumbs that have fallen between the counter and the stove.