Language in Nature

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

                Like California, Japan is in a seismically active area that geologists call the Ring of Fire. Experts claimed that there was no warning before the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake other than the nation’s earthquake-alert system that warned citizens that a tremor was coming. By the time the initial shaking from that 9.0 quake stopped, tsunami waves were on their way to devastate seaside communities and trigger a radiation leak and ultimate nuclear meltdown of the Fukashima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

                Over three and one-half years later, that area of the Ring of Fire lived up to its name again. Apparently, 150 hikers were on the crater when Mount Onatake, a volcano located in central Japan, unexpectedly burst to life on Saturday, September 27, 2014. Approximately 40 people died in the explosion; many witnesses reported that there had been no warning before the ash and gas explosion. This account worried me. As a resident in Southern California, I am very aware that there rarely is a warning before a natural disaster—at least, a disaster in which tectonic plates are involved. Or, are there warnings that humans just don’t yet know how to detect?

                When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, there were plenty of indicators that something was going on with the volcano. In addition to frequent and increasingly intense earthquakes, residents reported that their pets and livestock were behaving strangely before the eruption. I also remember hearing stories about birds becoming disoriented and flying into buildings; this strange behavior was explained as a consequence of some kind of electro-magnetic disturbance in the atmosphere. I don’t know if that was true, but I immediately thought of that theory when a bat inexplicable flew right into a book store where I was working in 2010. I remember telling a colleague, Either that bat is sick or we’re in for some major tectonic-plate activity. A few days later, on April 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Baja California. Shaking from the Mexicali Earthquake, as it was immediately dubbed, was strong enough to be felt all the way to Los Angeles County. The next day, one of the assistant managers I worked with came up to me and told me that he immediately recalled my “premonition” about earthquakes and was seriously spooked as soon as he felt the shaking.

                Remember when thousands of black birds inexplicably fell from the sky, dead, in Beebe, Arkansas on January 1, 2011? Experts ruled out poisoning or disease as a cause of death. However, thousands of other dead birds were reported in Kentucky and Louisiana around Christmas of 2010, and schools of fish suddenly washed up on the shores of the Arkansas River around that same time. Meanwhile, a 3.8 magnitude earthquake shook North-Central Indiana on December 30, 2010. Hmm….

                Less than one year after the bat flew into my bookstore before the Mexicali temblor hit and approximately three months after the blackbirds fell out of the sky in the Midwest following an earthquake near Indiana, the Tohuku Earthquake happened. Once again, a quake was preceded by a spooky animal behavior. Exactly one week before the quake, thousands of dead fish were discovered floating in a Los Angeles harbor. Once again, my first thought was that this incident could be a warning about an earthquake. I thought about a college geology lecture in which the instructor explained how noxious gases can be released during a quake. In 2004, several bison were poisoned by poison gases released near a geyser in Yellowstone National Park, which is a Super Volcano in its own right. Anyway, the connection between the dead sardines and tectonic activity made sense to me; and my prediction—if you want to call it that—came true on March 11, 2011.

                I prefer to think of my observations of behaviors or phenomena I observed or heard about were just that—observations—and not specifically predictions of future natural disasters. Again, as a resident in Southern California I am interested in earthquakes and other related phenomena because I live in an area that gets shaken up from time to time (pun intended). You can bet that if the Discovery Channel® is broadcasting a documentary about earthquakes, volcanoes or tsunamis is on that I will probably be tuning in to watch. As a fan of mystery novels and thrillers, it is fun for me to gather clues and collect evidence about potentially recurring events. As an animal lover, I watch a lot of documentaries and read books about the various species that most interest me. Needless to say, my interest definitely piques when the narrator or author describes what these animals seem to know (predict), how they behave and what they do to survive when a natural disaster destroys their home. Over the years of reading about, watching documentaries and experiencing earthquakes myself (subconscious knowns), I have created my own subconscious mental script and associations about these events and how to survive them. I just hope that neither I nor the people I care about are ever in a situation to have to activate that emergency plan.

               I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences to everyone who was affected by the eruption of Tohoku Volcano last week.