You've very likely heard before how humanity can't go on the way it is, but just as likely either don't see the immediacy/seriousness of the issue, or dismiss the idea as fringe lunacy, or are resigned to humanity ending in some cataclysmic event regardless of our actions. On the other hand, you might have enough of a grasp of the ecological underpinnings to appreciate the issue, but as an individual are either confused about what you can do, or too intimidated to challenge culture's steamroller.

It is scientifically accepted that on a cosmological timescale the Earth’s period of habitability is at least half over. In about another billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth. Even within the next billion years, there are numerous factors we can't control that threaten our existence on Earth (e.g. volcanism, earthquakes, asteroids, global epidemics, etc.). The future is undoubtedly a bumpy ride.

The issue here though is not about factors over which we have no control, that are likely to occur within the next billion years. It's about factors we're creating now, that we could better influence. Factors we're already seeing the detrimental consequences of, and which at the current scope and pace will cause substantially increasing harm to humanity well within the next couple hundred years. That is, the issue is about surviving our own controllable actions in the shorter term, to have time to possibly learn to survive uncontrollable factors in the longer term.

This isn't another prophecy, or mythology, but rather is based on our accumulating objective understanding of natural world ecology, in which our continuing existence is rooted. Our expanding knowledge and focus is more realistically encompassing the discontinuity in the gradient of human interaction with the natural world, yet the scope and pace of our detrimental actions are accelerating frantically.  The shorter term state of human existence on Earth depends on whether wisdom or irrationality prevail.  That is, whether objective understanding or subjective beliefs prevail. 

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Chew on this if you dare:  Have you ever stopped to consider what the human life form, indeed any higher life form, really is biologically, and how it integrates with the overall ecological environment?

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A departure from the normal presentation approach, this story is intended for the imagination of younger minds, and those that haven't lost such, to try to convey how important all animals are to us, and how companion animals reflect back the core of goodness in our humanity.  It's a short story about one day in a young boy's life, that has its roots in real life, but with artistic license taken to focus on the theme.

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Animals, having senses more attuned to the  natural world, may have something to teach us.  There's a farmer in Illinois who had planted soybeans on his 50-acre field for years.  He also had a flock of soybean-eating geese that took up residence in a pond nearby.  Being creatures of habit, the geese returned to the pond each year to feast on his soybeans. But then one year, the geese limited their eating to only a portion of his field.

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