Opossums and Power

One last zoological oddity to share after cuttlefish, bunyips, pangolins, and tardigrades - the opossum is North America's only marsupial and a wonderful little eco-ally, especially in wooded areas. They can eat up to 5,000 ticks in a season, their body temperature is typically too low to carry rabies, and they will eat venomous snakes with no ill effects.  The latter is especially helpful if, like us, you live in copperhead range in the American South with a yard covered with thick, protective ivy.  Izzy the cat had been bitten twice before his outdoor privileges were revoked.   

We would like to nominate the opossum as the official State Mammal of Georgia.  The State Mammal is currently the white-tail deer, which carries ticks, Lyme disease, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.  Deer no longer have natural predators, such as lynx or wolves, and frequently overpopulate, and each year are responsible for around 50,000 traffic accidents and the death of around 20 people.  So let's switch allegiance from the  deer to the opossum.  One species keeps us healthy and safe, and the other one is trying to kill us.

Since 1992, Walt Kelly's Pogo from the Okefenokee Swamp has had the dubious honor of being Georgia's "official opossum," but it's time to take it up a level and declare the opossum, all opossums, the overall official State Mammal.  

But this post wasn't supposed to be about opossums or Pogo or deer or any animal (even cuttlefish) - it was supposed to be about infrastructure and the electrical grid, which we propose is the fabric that holds modern society together. 

One generally doesn't even notice the power grid unless it's gone.  F'rinstance, at 8:15 this morning, while a particularly noisy and powerful thunderstorm was passing over the house, we lost power.  Lights out, no AC, no high-speed internet, nothing.  We slept the first couple of hours off (what better excuse to sleep late?) and then, finally arising, we  realized another ramification  of having no power - no morning coffee. That motivated us to finally get up and go out and drive to our local Starbucks, and en route we noticed that all the other homes in our neighborhood seemed to have power - we were the only ones in the dark.  Checking the outage map on the power company's website with our iPhone, we saw that they knew we were powerless, and correctly listed our local outage as being "less than five homes" (it was actually just us). The estimated time for restoration was listed as "TBD."

We found a chair by a window and read for a while, and around noon a Georgia Power truck pulled up in front of the house.  An intrepid worker used the lift to service the pole-mounted transformer and a long pole to close a switch, and suddenly we had power again.  Lights, AC, high-speed internet and even more coffee if we wanted.  We were civilized once more.

Which got us to thinking - couldn't it be argued that the defining characteristic of a modern society is the power grid?  We're all dependant on the grid for the electricity that powers nearly everything in our home, and without power, without lights and appliances and communication equipment, our homes are merely shelters from the rain and/or lockboxes for our stuff.  Very, very few of us can provide our own power or can get by for very long without it, and the electric grid is the very tangible thing that connects everyone in this city and this state together - rich and poor, black and white, young and old, Democrat and Republican, we're all united by the power grid.  

Politicians like us to think that our society is defined by the political jurisdictions in which we live - the neighborhood or the city or the county or the state - but those precincts, while useful, aren't necessarily essential.  We can probably get by without a lot of what society otherwise provides. Some Second Amendment, NRA types will insist that if we can all defend ourselves, we wouldn't need police.  We can probably find alternatives to the Fire Department, ambulances, and other emergency services (although we were real glad when the HERO truck arrived the day we were broke down in the HOV lane on the interstate).  We can go back to digging our own wells and having individual septic tanks, at least in the rural and suburban regions.  We can homeschool our own kids.  

But it takes a village to generate, distribute and maintain a power grid.  That, we argue, is the defining  characteristic of modern society.  We are not united by a voting precinct or a mayor or a governor or, most especially now, by a President.  We are all tied together by a common power grid, and that is the fabric that defines our society.

Anyway, deepest gratitude to the crew from Georgia Power for working in the rain, braving the heights and potential electric hazards of servicing a pole-mounted transformer in foul weather, just for one single customer (us).  Thanks, guys - you're the hallmark of a civilized society!