American toad trilling. photo by James Harding

ARMAGEDDON!!  There goes my eggplants!  If all  ends as the followers of the Doomsday folks of the Family Radio Worldwide -- predict, well  THE END IS NEAR!  and  with RAPTURE at the door  I guess this is my last Earth's Almanac blog post.  At least that's what they think!  And that means --if I was to be among the believers of the end, I would not be around to see my eggplants grow. But unless I am mistaken I will be here all summer, watching  eggplants and tomatoes grow and waiting for black walnuts to ripen.

Roadside billboards  say otherwise.  Some are heralding the world's end, tommorow Saturday, May 21st. And a statisic is floating about that 3% of the world's population -those that believe in this media fanned sillyness  lacking any logic  - will be beamed up to heaven for eternal life  tomorrow and the rest of us will be---well, you know..will be very very dead  before the sun rises on Sunday and will be condemned to to a deep down dismally hot location of fear and fantasy and pitchforks.

My plans for tonight, the last night of our  world?   I'll be listening  to mating sex trills of the toads on Friday night and celebrating the ways of nature and thinking about trails to hike and sunrises and sunsets to see. And if there is sunshine on Saturday and the mercury soars to 70 or higher the sex trills (that's trills, not thrills!) of toads will be heard wide and far in wet meadows and shallow ponds across Oakland County as they explode into a passion of song held back by a week of cold rains.  (That heavenly music of long drawn out trills should be a great earthly send off for the faithful followers of one self proclaimed prophet.)

Toad Talk Translation: I'm over here babe! Over here! Come on, before the pond drys up~ or the world ends!"    

A Missed Opportunity:  After scanning the internet I stumbled upon information from some creative self proclaimed atheists.  I wish I would have thought of it before them ! Eternal Earth-Bound Pets says on its website that they will "take the burden off your mind."  You must pay in advance --time is fleeting folks ! - but this post-doomsday pet rescue service will for $135 ensure your pet that gets left out of the Rapture will be looked out for after their owner goes over to the other side.  Tell you what!  For readers of The Oakland Press I will have a similar service ready for just $125 for the next planned End of the World in 2012--no checks please! And no French poodles.

My take on it all:  I've got a feeling we have many more season of toad  sex trills and magnificant sunsets waiting for us. Life on Earth is good, and our planet and most of humanity is not going away if we take care of it and ourselves. Well, then again there are those monstrous asteroids.

Bay of Fundy sunset, photo by Jonathan Schechter