Dr. Seuss Explains the Rocky Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic
Posted: September 12, 2014Source: New West
Photo Compliments of : Big Sky Country Photos
I will not eat green pine, says Flea.
Trees do not taste so good to me.
I will, I will, says the beetle.
I will eat them down to needles.
The beetles bite, they bore through bark.
They bore all day, they bite in dark.
They lay their eggs inside the tree.
And that makes more of them, you see.
The beetles eat all types of pine.
The mountain air suits them just fine.
Lodgepole, Whitebark, Scots and Limber
They will eat all sorts of timber.
RED RED
the needles turn red.
RED DEAD
red trees are dead.
BROWN DOWN
Brown trees fall down.
BURN TURN
In turn, they’ll burn.
The burn will make the forest hot.
I do not like this, I do not.
Say, spray, why don’t we spray?
How many beetles will we stop that way?
Not enough, it’s much too late.
Two million acres are in this state.
Boo hoo.
What can we do?
The air is filled with CO2.
The CO2 makes the air warm,
The warm air makes the beetles swarm.
The beetle swarm eats trees for lunch.
The winter does not stop their brunch.
It’s not so cold, so on they munch.
Can’t we take the trees that fall,
And turn them into ethanol?
Maybe, maybe, that might work.
That might give us extra perk.
But the only way to solve this danger
Is to give the problem to a ranger.
Rangers will burn here and there.
They’ll battle beetles from the air.
When rangers and beetles fight,
it’s called
a ranger beetle battle.
And when they
battle in a pine grove,
It’s a piney
ranger beetle battle.
AND when rangers
don’t know the beetles,
And they fight in forests full of needles,
they call it a stranger
ranger piney needle beetle battle.
Will fighting help?
We don’t know.
We’ll plant more trees
And they will grow.
But by then
we’ll all be old.
Piney beetles,
Your tree game is done
When you eat the final one.