When I was a child, life on the farm was good. We raised most of our own food; we were peaceful; we knew our neighbors and neighbors helped each other. I spent hours and hours outside. I was busy doing farm chores or playing outside. There were no close neighborhood kids, so I spent most of my time by myself. Well, not quite, I always had our dog or one of our cats for companions. I loved picking wildflowers and trudging around the woods, exploring and observing nature. Nature was abundant with life. Lots of bugs, birds, smaller mammals like chipmunks, squirrels, beavers, rabbits, mice, and larger ones like the deer and the bear. We also had an abundance of the ones I didn’t like so much—snakes. Later when I moved into the city, I still observed the bugs, making their way across the sidewalk, in the crevices and wherever soil or grass was present. I have noticed that I don’t see bugs anymore. The ground seems eerily silent. My own backyard is almost bugless! I have lived in my present home for 19 years. I used to notice the little insects scurrying around. But they are not present anymore. One of my large rhododendrons died this year. I wonder if the other three will follow. Every year until now I have had an abundant crop of raspberries. This year--less than a handful! I am fearful that we won’t realize the importance of bugs until they are gone. I don’t now and have never used any pesticides on my yard. But I am sure my soil has become contaminated by my neighbors’ use of weed killers, bug killers, and commercial fertilizers. And chemical toxins have been raining down on us from the skies via the chemtrails. We Have Become So Afraid of Bugs We are Destroying our Own Ecosystem. “Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers “If you think the biggest governments in the world are wrapped around the pesticide industry’s fingers, that’s nothing compared to the 35% of countries that have no regulation at all. It looks as if only an international convention can get pesticides back into a box that helps rather than harms us. It can’t come soon enough.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/21/assumed-safety-of-widespread-pesticide-use-is-false-says-top-government-scientist Bugs are a crucial part of the ecosystem of our earth. "If insects were to disappear, the world would fall apart — there's no two ways about it," said Goggy Davidowitz, a professor in the departments of entomology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.” https://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.html Our fear of acquiring illnesses coupled with the technology to raise crops with chemicals has gone way over the edge of common sense. Have we reached the tipping point of no return? Nature has its own way of controlling insects, diseases, and our entire ecosystem. Corporations insatiable greed and drive to control the world may cause a collapse that will threaten the life of every one of us. First the bugs, then the birds, and the flowers, the plants, the fruits, vegetables, grains—then the larger animals that we consume for food. Corporations have either forgotten or are ignorant of the complex natural ecosystem that has produced and maintained life on this planet for thousands and thousands of years. Can the technology that humans have produced erase this grand natural system that has worked so magnificently long before humans created deadly toxic mixtures? We need the bugs. “If total flying insect biomass is genuinely declining at this rate – about 6% per year – it is extremely concerning,” she said. “Flying insects have really important ecological functions, for which their numbers matter a lot. They pollinate flowers: flies, moths and butterflies are as important as bees for many flowering plants, including some crops. They provide food for many animals – birds, bats, some mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and decomposers, controlling pests and cleaning up the place generally.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers “Specific extinctions have also contributed to the thinning numbers, and 42 per cent of bugs on the IUCN’s Red List are categorised as being under threat. ‘However, in many ways the loss of bioabundance is perhaps more significant,’ argues Goulson. ‘If flying insect populations are down by as much as 80 per cent, that means far fewer pollinators and far less food for insect-eating animals such as bats and birds." https://geographical.co.uk/nature/wildlife/item/2285-bug-s-life “In September, a chief scientific adviser to the UK government warned that regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and that the “effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored”……"Most of our food is insect-dependent," said Davidowitz. "If insects disappear, a lot of mammals and birds disappear, too, because if you don't have insects pollinating, even those animals that don't eat insects won't have fruit and foliage to eat. It does have a domino effect." https://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.html When will we notice that we need the bugs?