This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees’ range has shrunk by 90%.
(my own photos)
Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.
Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would’ve penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you’ve observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.
You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:
Go where you are respected, where you are appreciated, where you are wanted. You gain nothing by sticking it out and swallowing any mistreatment. But by walking away from those experiences you teach yourself that you are worthy of respect, of love, of quality relationships; and you also teach others that when they do not mirror the same level of respect, their access to you is revoked, end of story.
Smtimes your house is haunted because there’s a ghost sometimes your house is haunted because you miss grandma and your mom misses her even more sometimes your house is haunted because the subtext of how the last owners decorated rubs you wrong way sometimes your house is haunted because you’ve sublimated the fact that you didn’t want to move in the first place and Sometimes your house is haunted because there’s a carbon monoxide leak. Lots of options.
