Out our window

DOWN THE ROAD
A PIECE
By Milt Gross

Awhile ago this morning I lay on our sofa, at times putting my book aside to rest my eyes and gazing out the window.

At one point, that gaze turned into something a bit more thoughtful. I was noting the variety of trees that were waving in this morning’s breeze from the ocean.

Now I am not good at recognizing different types of trees, that is, “breeds,” except that I think I have seen most of them before. I can tell a dogwood from a maple or from a pine. But I realized this morning that I’ve seen most of them before, here and there, in a woods through which I was driving or deep in a forest off the Appalachian Trail.

What I also realized is that I have never seen any “new” trees, trees developing and changing from one kind to another. That change would be the essence of total evolution, and I’ve never noticed it among trees. Have you?

That started me thinking about the other critters, animals. I’ve never seen a beaver-type critter that had changed from a woodchuck-type. I’ve never noticed a moose that obviously had been born of a combination moose and deer. I’ve seen lots of deer and a good many moose. But none that apparently came from a combination of those two.

I recall, when I was a school teacher, having a discussion or debate with a science teacher down the hall, who believed in total evolution. I didn’t. I believed that what I had seen in yonder woods was born and raised by critters of the same variety as itself. At one point in our debate, the other teacher said, “I’ve never heard anyone make that statement before.”

I don’t recall what we had been discussing or debating, but apparently I had won. He was a nice guy and we remained friends, each working in our classroom up the hall from the other.

I don’t recall ever seeing a horse birthing a critter that looked like a deer … not even like a mule, although mules don’t breed. They stubbornly remain mules. Nor have I ever seen a rabbit give birth to a groundhog. Nor a dog to a cat. They all have their behavioral habits and individual looks.

Now my observances don’t “prove” total evolution doesn’t ever happen. It does show I’ve never seen such changes born that show total evolution is true.

Notice I use the phrase “total evolution,” because one breed dog after a hundred years has become the parent or great-, great-, great-grandparent of another type dog. The “another” type would be a mongrel – or some specific breed. There are many types – breeds – of dogs, but that is because the human owners bred them that way. Those pups become the closest I’ve seen to evolution, and it was breeding, not evolution that produced them. The different type dogs were bred for varying purposes, to herd, to hunt, to be pets. But those differences were done deliberately by man’s interference in the breeding process.

I have friends who insist that total evolution is true, although they haven’t observed it. I insist – or believe – that total evolution doesn’t occur between species. That mutt I hear yapping a half-mile away happened either because of a human breeder or because of a lack of such. It sounds like a spaniel type, which type was bred to hunt small critters in tight places … by human intervention.

The favorite dog of Maine is a Labrador retriever, developed by humans for hunting. All mine were pets, but they were still Labs, the ancestors of which were bred by humans for hunting.

All this doesn’t “prove” that total evolution between species doesn’t occur – only that I have never observed it. And I don’t know anyone who has.

It does prove that I became a writer, because I years ago wanted to try it. But my well-intentioned attempts didn’t occur by accident. No one else in my family was a writer. (You may think I’m not either.)

What all this verbiage states is that I have never observed total evolution between species. Have you?

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at  lesstraveledway@roadrunner.com.