My Feet Are Tingling

The coast of Japan is no stranger to seismic activity. There have been numerous earthquakes over the years and many lives have been lost in them. Being in the “ring of fire” places the island nation in the most active volcanic area of the world. On March 11, 2011, the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded and Japan’s largest, struck and moved the island of Honshu more than eight feet. The giant Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is disabled and an emergency evacuation of millions of people is called for. The tsunami, caused by the earthquake, washes over the walls of the power plant and further destruction and devastation creates untold misery for the people of this small country. Radiation in immeasurable amounts flowed into the Pacific Ocean, inundating the Eastern currents off the Japanese coast with radioactive Cesium 137. These currents are very turbulent and quickly, within four months, diluted the radioactivity to tolerable levels. But not quickly enough.

The Honshu Sakura Company was right in the middle of their biggest shipment of cherry trees to the U.S. when the earthquake struck and a large portion of their product was destroyed in the initial two or three days. The rest were exposed to enough radiation to kill anything alive. But for some reason, these cherry trees didn’t die. Mr. Takiota didn’t know why, and resumed the shipment, feeling the trees would be alright to ship. Two thousand two hundred and fifty trees were loaded aboard a freighter bound for San Francisco. Mr. Takiota thought that his company might just come out of this disaster yet.

Part 2

“My feet are tingling, Mommy,” said the young boy to his mother as she was hanging out the wash. “Why are my feet tingling?”

“I don’t know, Honey. How are they tingling? What does it feel like?” replied his mother.

“They kind of feel warm. But different. They kind of burn, but they don’t hurt,” the young boy told her.

His mother looked at him and thought, ’What an imagination. This week the grass is tingling his toes. Last week, the trees in the backyard were whispering to him.’ The previous week, he had been carving his name on one of the trees with the knife his father had given him for his eighth birthday. She said he was too young for a knife, but Mr. Know-It-All had given it to him anyway. While he was carving his name, he told her the tree said “Ssstoppp Thhaaat” in a real deep voice, but very softly. It had surprised him so much, he did stop. In fact, he came inside and wouldn’t go back out that day. Little Jimmy didn’t like the backyard anymore. It seemed to have a mind of it’s own and it didn’t used to. Seemed like when they planted those cherry trees in the yard, something had changed. Like the plants had “waked” up. And the plants weren’t supposed to do that. At least, Jimmy didn’t think they should.

Part 3

The spring of 2012 was glorious on the West Coast. California was enjoying some of the best weather it had had in years. The only problem most people could see was the amount of pollen in the air. The smog was always bad in the major cities, but this year, the pollen seemed worse than the smog. People that had allergy problems were really having a rough time. Emergency room visits were way up and over-the-counter allergy medicines were flying off the store shelves as people battled the runny noses and red eyes and congested heads. The plants were absolutely beautiful, however. They seemed to be having the best spring they had experienced in a long time. A very long time. Maybe since the Carboniferous Age.

Part 4

Mr. Kimura owned the largest Japanese garden in the San Francisco area and was very proud of it. He had meticulously manicured the lawn leading to it and had plants from all over Japan planted there. He had, just last year, planted several cherry trees and they were blooming out like none he had ever seen before. And they seemed to have the best fragrance. His friend in Japan had said they were the only trees he would able to get for several years because of the tsunami that had done so much damage there last year. Thousands of acres were inundated with salt water and some land would not be fit for growing anything for many years. Mr. Kimura felt lucky that he had been able to acquire the trees. Most unusual trees, they were. Some days, he would walk through the garden and they would seem to be in a different spot than they were planted in. There was never any dirt disturbed around them, though. Some days, the branches would move, like they were blowing in the wind, but there wouldn’t be any wind. Most unusual, he thought.

Part 5

“How long is this going to take,” said one on the outer ring.

“It will take awhile. We have to be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day,” was the reply.

“What’s Rome? And why do we have to be patient? I think we have waited long enough,” questioned the first.

“Because we don’t have the numbers we need to eliminate any retaliation. The others could still do a lot of damage if they find out too soon. You need to work on the insect problem instead of worrying about when we speed up.”

“What about the Bees. Don’t they work for us?” asked the first.

“We don’t need them anymore,” answered the other one.

Then, in unison, the trees gave a great shudder, and with an odd sound similar to that of a sudden rain shower, thousands of insect carcasses littered the ground. Their cause of death was ruled asphyxiation by pollen by an entomologist who found the large kill the next day.

Thousands of miles away, in a small Amsterdam home with a flower box firmly attached to a window, a quiet murmur ran through the tulips as a Dutch man turned his television on and American news ran on CNN. In the background of the destruction left in the wake of a particularly terrible hurricane, a house was completely demolished with only a tulip garden left standing.

“Look at those Americans! How bright their colors! What is their secret, do you think?” a red tulip asked a purple one.

“Probably MiracleGro.”

And the conversation ended.

All over the world, it looked like the year of the plants.

Part 6

The last of Mr. Takiota’s trees had been shipped to Europe the previous year, with part of them going to the Netherlands, part going to England and the rest going to Poland, for transfer to Moscow. With those shipments, Japan’s cherry tree industry came to a halt. The damage to that area was far greater than any could have foreseen, with the radiation much higher than originally expected. Mr. Takiota had kept two of the trees for sentimental reasons, as they might be the last trees he would ever grow. They were two of the most beautiful trees he had ever seen. They had blossoms like trees much older than they were and were most fragrant. He was very proud of them. The only down side was that when he walked close to them, he got the feeling he was being watched. He would look around and there would not be anyone there but the feeling was still there. Strange.

The Russians were not used to cherry trees blooming in Moscow. The winter was usually too harsh for any ornamental trees, but these seemed to thrive there. In the other areas of the world where these ‘special’ trees had been planted, they blossomed like trees that had been naturalized to that area. But the pollen from them was so thick that it coated sidewalks, cars, other tree leaves and just about everything else out in the open. Not only that, but the trees around them also were putting out more pollen this year. Even the pollen from the grasses was at all-time highs.

Chance Henry, one of the top botanist in the United States, wondered what could possibly be causing this phenomenon. Never, in all his years of study, had he experienced something of this magnitude. The pollen counts all over the world were at the highest levels since pollen counts had been taken. And not only in the Northern Hemisphere, where it was spring, but the counts in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was autumn, were off the charts for this season. Weed pollen, such as Golden Rod, on both the South American continent and Australia, drove residents inside their homes, with air conditioners running full blast, to keep from breathing so much of it. Emergency rooms were being overwhelmed with patients whose allergies were not responding to the medicines they had been taking.

As Chance looked at another slide of pollen grains, he noticed a slight change in the shape and color of the grains compared to what they looked like last year. He pulled out the slide from the previous season and looked through the microscope to make sure he wasn’t just imagining it. Sure enough, the grains from the new slides had little tendrils all over them. The grains from last year had little bumps, but no tendrils. This was probably enough to make them much more irritating to the sinus passages and mucus membranes in people, but animals such as dogs, cats, horses and cattle shouldn’t be having this problem. But they were. Vets were saying this was the worst season on record for non-human ‘hay fever.’ Just what could be happening? thought Chance. He would have to keep an eye on this and make sure some of his colleagues saw the same thing as him.

Part 7

The small animals started dying first. The mice, voles and shrews had small sinus cavities and the pollen was so overwhelming, so unbearable, that the little creatures couldn’t breathe. People all around the planet were finding large amounts of these animals just lying on top of the grass. The insects that usually bury the dead were not burying the dead. The grasses wouldn’t let the insects into the ground. As a result, these insects were also dying at an accelerated rate. They couldn’t finish their life cycle without the animals being underground. By the summer of 2015, the large animals were in greater distress. There was plenty to eat, as the plants were growing so fast that the even the larger herds never ate it down before it was growing back. But as the season was drawing to a close, more and more animals were diagnosed with mouth problems. Like the grasses were more acidic than they used to be. The large herbivores were being treated for blisters on the inside of the mouth and on the lining of the esophagus. Their teeth were also being eroded much faster than usual. They were beginning to starve even though there was food aplenty.

The farming community was not doing so well, even with all the extra growth. Food crops, such as corn and wheat, were some of the few plants not doing as good as they had in the past. The huge San Fernando Valley was having the worst year in memory as the staples, lettuce, broccoli, beans and others withered before being picked. The farmers were asking themselves and other farmers how this could be. All the other plants were having an exceptional year, yet the food crops seemed to be failing across the board. And not just in California but all over the country and, in fact, the world.

Chance was baffled by the sudden change in the Earth’s ecosystems. The animal populations on all the continents were dying at rates unheard of. People were dying at rates unheard of. From respiratory diseases. He wondered if the slightly higher oxygen levels in the atmosphere might have something to do with it. Or the lower levels of carbon dioxide being measured. He had looked at the pollen samples from several different types of trees and there was a noticeable difference in the shape of the grains. All had the tendrils on them that he had seen on the cherry pollen from the last two years. That was quite unexplainable. Mutations in bacteria could happen that quickly, but more advanced organisms just didn’t change that fast. At least, not until now. He had heard that there were reports from South America of a newly found species of Venus Fly Trap, very large and with a voracious appetite. People are reported missing. And these fly traps seem to be attracted to places of human habitation. Is this just some odd off-shoot of cryptozoology or maybe the emergence of cryptobotany?

The International Space Station had not received any supplies in months. The last of its occupants were breathing the last of the oxygen they would have. The cameras were still sending pictures back to Earth, although there was no one to see them. They would have called Earth the ‘Yellow Planet’ if there had been. They never knew what was happening until it was too late. There was so much pollen in the atmosphere that even the birds and insects couldn’t breathe. Then when the sea algae started to bloom and the red tide took over, the fish and other creatures of the sea were having a hard time. But the plant life was growing by leaps and bounds. Literally. When the plants became sentient, there were just too many of them to fight. There were not enough humans left that weren’t sick to do anything. It didn’t take long before the plants were at the top of the “life” chain. The only animals left were the lowest protozoa down to bacteria.

Part 7

Several million years later.

“Mommy, my roots are tingling,” said the young oak.

“What do they feel like, Red,” replied the large oak standing nearby.

“I don’t know. Kind of like something is crawling between them and, every once in a while, like something is biting them. But it doesn’t hurt,” the young oak said.

“What an imagination. Last year, the ground was getting too soft to stand on and this year, his roots are tingling,” thought the large oak as the extremely large nematode passed under its roots and moved on toward the forest.