explantion to comment in Day 4 CRW 2023

snowywinter • 26 January 2023 at 3:41 AM

not only will this probably be a little long, but branching off-topic and a bit sad.
Decided to put this here rather than PMing a bunch of people. (And I don't know if adding people later on if they could retroactively see the explanation. I haven't used a lot of group messages.)

Read at your own risk. I do NOT get graphic in the details, but this is not pleasant. (For people who love animals or care about the environment.)
I do not recommend sensitive types tread this. (Or at least have a comfort plan in place.)

(Apologies some of the details are a bit fuzzy as this was told to me about 30 years ago.)

- - - - - - - - - -


So... the deer falling into the pit of toxins...

It was the 1960's or 70's. My father (a kid or teen at the time) was hunting in forest behind his family's property. (As you did back then for food.)
One of the contractors or subsidiaries of a major global chemical company was digging huge holes in the ground (in what had been a gravel quarry? or maybe the gravel quarry came later?)... and my dad had been keeping an eye on the goings ons. They were burying tank/ers (those huge cylinders you see on trains.) he would soon find out what was in them. (he knew it couldn't be good if they even chased him and his dad off by gunfire a few times.)
As he tracked the deer through the forest it happened to lose its footing on the slimy edge of one of these pits. Dad heard its cries of distress before he even got to the pit and it was unlike anything he ever heard before (And they had a full functioning farm and actively trapped for furs, food, and bounties. - contributing to extinctions & near extinctions of some species is something he'd regret later on, but it was the times he lived in.) but by the time he reached it (it wasn't long) he knew there was nothing that could be done to save the deer, and likely would die in the process. (I forget what exactly happened to the deer as my own memory of seeing a fish disintegrate right in front of me is burned into my mind.)
Father made it his mission to find out what was in those tankers.
And he did. And he told every agency he could over the years. And Politicians. He almost gave up hope. But still he tried every few years.
Especially as his family's farm got smaller, commercial enterprises went up on the location, and on the other side in the same watershed it was turned into a nature reserve, and campground, and hiking trials.
It wasn't until a congress person or some such that frequented those trails started getting sick that anything was done. Hardly anyone believed him either. But at the same time he was going up against a company that went out of business years before, and a multi-billion dollar global company with lawyers and lobbyists, ...and zero culpability.
Finally most of the dumping was proven true. But as quickly as it came, it was swept under the rug. The findings were published in a single newspaper article and that was it. No one talked about it. Most local people I talk to today are still completely unaware. (Or shrug because it happened 'so long ago' as if those chemicals aren't still dangerous.) Some of the tankers were removed but the number found/admitted to is far smaller than the number my father seen buried.

So yeah, that's why moss-deer gives me the willies. Some part of my brain says there's a glowing element to my dad's story about the deer. keep trying to tell myself it's just ectoplasm or the glowing moss on the Alcarsh, but the fear/sadness/trauma runs deep.


Addendum:
I think the article was published around 2011? give or take several years.

shirothekittehlover • 26 January 2023 at 4:35 AM

@snowywinter
......My goodness......
It's honestly sad when nobody cares about something serious like this at all :[

snowywinter • 26 January 2023 at 4:59 AM

@shirothekittehlover

*nods*
Or cares... just not in a way/contradictory to we'd consider beneficial nowadays.

And almost anyone who lives in the area has camped in that campground, or walked in the forest for field trips for school, or swam at the beach. So I'm sure there's the mentality of "I've been there and I'm fine!"
Are we, are we really. Plenty diagnoses of rare forms of cancer in our area*... and even the forest has always looked sickly compared to other wilderness areas I've been to. leaves on the trees always sort of look wilted and withered as if fall were approaching... even in early summer.

(*Though to be fair a lot of those can also be linked directly to the coal power plant, or some of peoples industry jobs - like that global chemical company.)

shirothekittehlover • 26 January 2023 at 5:08 AM

@snowywinter
Yeesh.......

ravenskyfire • 4 February 2023 at 12:23 AM

Wow! Good on your Dad for trying to get something done about it!!

wolfmoon • 4 February 2023 at 2:23 AM

That is very upsetting! I'm actually happy that someone is doing something about it. 1