Remember the old nursery rhyme about a little chicken named Henny Penny (or Chicken Little, for most of us in the U.S.) who thought the sky was failing because an acorn fell on his head?
Now this column is not about a dumb chicken but dumb humans who see everyday occurrences as sure signs the world is ending.
Who cannot recall all the “end of the world” preachers of the last decades that somehow were able to gather large numbers of followers by proclaiming that judgment day was nigh? Some gave all their money to these charlatans and some ended up giving their lives in order to meet a UFO coming to get them from this planet of doom.
Ol’ Dutch has never been one to really worry about the end of the world much as there really isn’t much you can do about it anyway. I figure if we make it through September and elk season I am good to go. After that there really isn’t much to live for until next season, anyway.
For other people they are constantly worrying about what will happen next. Did you see that just last week the Internet – a main source of dire warnings – gave notice that the Sun only has about another three billion years of heat in it before it goes dark?
Since most of us are happy to make it to the next payday with money in the bank, talking about something that will happen in three billion years is a tad hard to get excited about.
There are some -- like my daughter Cricket and her husband Cap, both professors of some note -- who insist that global warming or cooling or whatever you believe in is imminent. Yet, it’s still hard to think about a two percent change in temperatures when Johnny needs new braces or Uncle Bill needs his gallbladder out next week
Last week there was news about earthquakes in Montana and that it may be signaling the complete destruction of mankind as we know it with a Yellowstone massive eruption.
Now Ol’ Dutch has been hearing that since he was three years old on a family vacation to just that spot so it’s a little hard to get too excited about such things especially since there is not one darn thing any of us can do about it.
From today’s headlines, I learn that a meteor is gonna wipe us out, the North Koreans are gonna wipe us out, the seas are going to wipe us out, and some new drug resistant disease is gonna wipe us out. There is no hope.
What is funny about that, at least to Ol’ Dutch, is that with some world-shaking news, you wonder what other news headlines could possibly be of interest? But, there it is. The companion news to these dire predictions: the winner at Wimbledon, the G-20 Summit, the fires across the Western U.S., the story about a kid finding his lost dog, some wild monkeys loose in Florida and last but not least the man who grew a tomato that looks like Elvis would just not really be important enough to be included on the same page of headlines.
Now Ol’ Dutch might be able to get worked up about Kim Dong Nutjob over there in Korea but it’s hard to stay focused on a good disaster when there is news out there like “Homeless Man finds a Carrot” just waiting to be read.
Miss Trixie to her credit tends to see the good in most people and is always trying to give Ol’ Dutch some hope in this blighted world so I guess she is reading the other headlines instead of the doomsday ones so prevalent.
In the end, I guess, we are too busy working and raising a family to really get excited about a new prophet of doom with a new dire prediction. Crying wolf too many times has made us all just too jaded to care. And that’s another nursery rhyme to be considered.
Cricket recently was trying to get me to focus on some important environmental news. And, I finally had to ask, if she ever stopped to think that with all that’s going on in the world, the fish are still biting somewhere. And that my friend, is true wisdom you can take to the bank – or at least in your belly.

Kevin Kirkpatrick and his Yorkie, Cooper, fish, hunt, ATV or hike daily. His email is [email protected]. Additional news can be found at www.troutrepublic.com or on Twitter at TroutRepublic.