
Sure, it's not like an asteroid the size of the national debt was discovered headed for Earth or that the Antichrist was caught tanking up the Prius of Doom by security cameras at a mini-mart in Barstow. I admit that. These are more subtle harbingers of the coming collapse of civilization.
The DEA, at a hearing concerning the possible legalization of medical marijuana in Utah, raised concerns that marijuana cultivation would result in addiction problems among the wild rabbit population of that state. Agent Matt Fairbanks warned that stoned hares would lose their fear of humans after nibbling weed all day. He did not seem to consider the possibility that these slacker rabbits would get that fear right back and then some after marijuana farmers started blasting away at them with bunny guns when they caught them chomping on their sinsemilla.
Instead of bolting away in fear at the sight of humans, the DEA warns that bunnies in the land of Mormon goodness may pop out of their hutches and start nibbling on your socks until you give them some ganja, or at the very least put some Bob Marley on your truck radio. The spiritual leader of the nation's conies, Bugs Bunny, will no longer chew on a cartoon carrot before pulling yet another smarmy fraud on Elmer Fudd. Instead, he'll take a hit on a huge fattie before saying something which sounds really profound if you are as baked as he is, but which neither of you will be able to remember in the morning and which begins with the words "Like, wow..."
If the image of countless cottontails reggaeing across the range does not stir in you a deep foreboding that the end is nigh, consider the news from the roof of the world. Mt Everest is ankle-deep in human waste, according to local Ang Tshering. 700 plus brave souls come to tackle the world's highest peak every year, and instead of peacefully crapping in their drawers like most of us would do when confronted with the prospect of climbing almost 30,000 feet up an ice-covered peak so we could get to a place where there is insufficient oxygen to support brain function, they bravely dig holes in the ice up high and make poopie there. The number of these holes and the richness of their contents has grown enough to trigger a reaction from Ang and his Everest homeboys, and that reaction is "Yuck."
Everest's spring thaw can now be detected by smell, and the serenity of the Tibetan monasteries down slope from the mighty mountain is now disturbed by the monks worrying about an unpleasant "poovalanche" from on high. Such are the fears of the modern Sherpa, and Ang says they can only be allayed by future climbers packing portable poo bags along with their picks and pitons.
Hauling all of your personal product up to the highest point on Earth and then having to freight it down again after your moment of mountaineering triumph might lessen your enthusiasm for the jaunt, which may very well be what the subtle Sherpas have in mind. For sure, when you are rummaging in your backpack, you don't want to grab it by mistake when you are looking for your beef jerky. The Tibetans are perhaps hoping that the mere thought of keeping such close quarters with your waste may persuade you to forgo Everest in favor of some other pointless, uncomfortable and extremely dangerous form of self-expression, like base-jumping, or shark-wrangling, or paddle-boarding from Australia to New Zealand.
And they can have the mountain to themselves again, making them all as happy as a rabbit in Utah.