The robins have not yet appeared out my window. It is still too cold. The squirrels, meanwhile, go about their business year around, finding nuts, even pieces of bread left by kind people. Animals of all kind are wise, while we human beings are mostly lost in our illusion of what constitutes worth. Deer and elk up in the high country do not miss the chaos we human beings call civilization. The Civil War, for example, was, by no means, civil. Nowadays the scholars think that possibly as many as 700,000 men lost their lives over the horror of human *******. Not for a second would even one rabbit condone slavery, but our Constitution made it legal. A buffalo, if there still is one, would never **** with impunity a black 13 year old girl, then sell her for a handsome profit to another American citizen who happened to be a slave owner himself. Do you think a worm or an otter would brook 60 lashes to a slave who had the audacity to try to learn how to read or write? Slavery's child, racism, was never just in the Deep South. Today, this moral disease permeates every town and city in our "democracy" from sea to shining sea. When do you think the robin will reappear? When do think humanity will become as moral as any raccoon or fox?