Thank you to all Veterans for your courage, sacrifice and accomplishments. May you return home safe and sound, and find eventual peace.

The Pacific Northwest is in peril from climate change. All politics and beliefs aside, Puget Sound is acidic enough to melt the shells off mollusks and there are Pine Beetles ravaging our forests.

Now I understand dead trees and the occasional Great White Shark off our coastline is not horrifying in itself, but think of the long-term effects.

Hordes of tropical bugs that kill small children, pets and cows may no longer stop at the current Northern California “it’s getting cold” border. We watched the fire-ants march northward through Texas and the South only to be overtaken by an even more dangerous species of smaller ant that overcomes resistance and transformers with sheer numbers. Can we count on continued damp, cold and miserable weather to keep us safe?

For us older folk, the danger of an alligator cruising the Arboretum or the shores of Lake Washington is a ludicrous thought. However, twenty years of creeping warmth could inundate us with flying bugs that look like armed military helicopters and cockroaches capable of bringing down small dogs.

Our treasured lives of no hurricanes, tornadoes, poisonous snakes and insects may come to an end even before the much anticipated big earthquake hits. The one that splits the Mt. Baker, Rainier, St. Helens and Shasta zipper up the middle and lets fly with house-sized boulders and a six-foot blanket of ash.

And we worry about our children facing a depleted Social Security fund? How about a twelve-foot python under their house?