It is becoming very clear that Mother Earth is in a precipitous decline, at least in terms of what mankind has known as a stable earth environment and a place for it to thrive as a species. The canaries in the coal mines of the consequences of our rapacious activities come in many forms and are revealed in diverse measurements. For example, where are the clouds of bugs that used to smear our windshields on those summer hot July nights when we sped hither and yon in our youth looking for love, or, at least, a cold beer near a stone-lined mountain stream swimming hole?

I am looking at my pond and, without any science to back up my statement, it looks as if the number of dragonflies and damsel flies is like half of what I remember them being on a sunny afternoon. Who doesn’t love watching the aerobatics, their deadly hunting skills, as they pluck their picnics from the open sky? Tip, tip, tip, their tails on the water surface, laying their eggs, dip, dip. Evinrude, the father. The green woods, the pond green in reflection, the dragonflies in sunlight, the sunlight, the hot wood of the dock, the sun on their wings, the sun on their glass wings like flakes of timeless Roman glass settling on fresh brown cattails.

And let’s think of hawks as canaries.

Where are all the hawks? I don’t see a single one. Redtails used to nest on the top of our hill, or here, along the abandoned logging road, or across the state highway in the big swamp white oak in JoJo McVoy’s old pasture grown, now, grown to impassibility. Where are they? And the kestrels that would hunt from the telephone wires along DuBois Road, or in Benedict Farm Park. Where are they? Gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

No screech of the young redtail telling its mother in a far hedgerow where he is hunting, no sound at all. And the woods are quiet, so quiet with only the beautiful song of the wood thrush breaking the distressed silence of the canopied moraine. Or the woodpecker in the 5 a.m. light, pounding on the soffits to discover the carpenter bee’s tunnel and eat it. And one or two small birds -- Nuthatch, maybe an Oriole. But no Scarlet Tanagers, no Indigo Buntings, no King Birds, no Woodcock on the logging road, just firecrackers, incessant, in the distant clustered zoning.

And in the hayfields, so few Redwings and no Bobolinks.

Yet, we got rabbits. We got rabbits everywhere. An abundance. A nuisance, a liability. Peter rabbit be damned. Don’t get under my fence. Eating my new row of green beans right off at the ground, getting in the greenhouse and munching on tomatoes the moment they show any signs of ripening. Chomping even on the pepper plants. It’s too much. We work too hard to feed rabbits. The hawks used to help. The rabbits used to be controlled. No hawks, no hunters. Redwings and Broad-winged Hawks love rabbit like a Frenchman from Lyon loves rabbit. The rabbits have free range without the birds of prey. The balance of nature is out of kilter. It made me do the unthinkable, search the house up and down for the black metal clip that fits the long-sequestered Montgomery Ward 22. “We’ll see about this,” said the limping codger.