Scat, Covid, Scat
Hi Charlie,
"There's elk poop on every sidewalk!” remarked Francis Hopkins of the Grizzly House Restaurant in the Town of Banff.
Have the animals reclaimed their lands? Maybe, but perhaps we should ask a more important question: “is that a lot of elk poop?”
Let’s compare. A medium-sized dog might have a 6-ounce poop, twice a day. The average elk poop (officially called scat) weighs 4 pounds – 10 times more than your fur baby’s.
Some smartass hunters point out that each individual elk scat is about the size and shape of a Malteser. They encourage you to carry a bag so that when you come across elk scat you can reach down, pretend to pick up a piece of scat and pop a Malteser in your mouth.
Lest you think this is a random anecdote, elk poop had its viral moment in the COVID online conversation the week of April 6th:
The context of the animals retaking Banff is that many of us are looking for a silver lining, a hope that this massive transformation of society will lead to a better future.
For many people, these animals are signs that nature is healing. That we can see how much better the world is without carbon emissions. That we will finally have the political will and popular support to make the difficult choices and decisions required to mitigate climate change.
Other threads of hope are that
Corporations are more genuinely committed to supporting society and investing in social good (e.g., their medical supply donations).
The swift and agile response to lockdown has unlocked a more innovative and dynamic society than we knew were capable of.
The time we’ve had to reflect on our lives and spend more time with our families will lead to a far more sustainable and balanced lifestyle than we lived just a few months ago.
Social distancing has shown us just how important it is to be kind and connected to each other and that this will lead to more meaningful relationships.
Gratitude for what we have and whom is in our lives will become a far more important part of how we deal with each other.
These are lovely thoughts, but they are not necessarily new thoughts.
A question that has preoccupied us: is COVID changing our hopes or is COVID a new frame for the hopes we already had? Before COVID’s arrival, many people hoped for a more sustainable future. A look at the conversation around COVID reveals an abundance of people hoping that COVID will be the catalyst that will create this future. But if we look at conversation around sustainability overall, the volume of conversation has not increased.
People who care deeply about sustainability hope that COVID will raise its importance in society. That does not mean more people care about sustainability as a result of COVID. We see similar patterns for people’s hopes for a more equitable world and a more conscious world.
One notable exception is our hope that science, expertise and evidence-based decision making will play a more prominent role in society. Hopes for this future are directly related to the COVID conversation. Lots of the posts around this aren’t so much hopes as demands.
You probably noticed that most of our hopes for the future are grounded in existing dissatisfactions we have with today. Why is it so hard for us to imagine a better, but completely unexpected future?
For a number of reasons. We’re overly optimistic that the things we want to happen will actually happen. We erroneously base our predictions on our past experiences. When we get new information, we often think it fits into what we already believe to be true.
Some of the more famous prognosticators of the future include Nostradamus, Alvin & Heidi Toffler, Amy Webb, Amy Zalman and the Simpsons. Indeed, some people credit the Simpsons with predicting the pandemic back in 1993 (Episode 21, Season 4). Other, as yet to be realized, predictions by the Simpsons include hover cars, mind control through music, virtual reality food, hologram mail, Ivanka Trump for president in 2028, corporate suppression of green energy, and robots taking over. Who says all predictions of the future are bull-scat?
Of course, after 639 episodes (or 239 hours of content to fill) some predictions are bound to be true, no matter how outlandish.
By the time all this is over, the best, most positive outcomes of COVID will likely be something we didn’t see coming. That’s pretty hopeful.
Grab your Maltesers and join us for Monday Morning Meditation – a 15-minute guided meditation this Monday at 8:30am MST. Just click on our Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/217902912?pwd=Yy9teVcvYTFjVzh4aVdxZFQwdU00dz09
P.S. if you would rather not receive any more of our e-mails, please reply back with “no thanks” or “this is bullshit” as you prefer.
Philip
Footnotes
Other interesting facts about elk poop we discovered while researching this story:
Fresh, wet, green poop on dry ground is a near sure sign that elk were or are in the area.
On dry ground elk poop dries out rather quickly...a matter of hours.
Really fresh stuff may even have a shine to it as the outside is still wet.
VERY fresh poop will have an elk standing over it.
(In case you’re wondering why the uninhibited use of the word “poop” this week, we have a number of parents with young children on the Stormy Lake team and it sort of rubbed off on us. Literally for Charlie.)
N.B. We did not receive any consideration from Maltesers or its parent company, Mars, Incorporated, for its inclusion in this article.