BlueZer0.net

The first thing that brought these startling facts to my attention was that there were dramatic changes in the trees. I started to notice that the leaves were becoming a paler shade of green than they had been since I moved into my new abode. Then, as the days went by, and the temperature dropped, the pale green became a sickly, colorless shade before turning alarming colors -- first red, then yellow.

These trees appeared to be affected by some kind of tree disease or something, but then The Shadow realized that it was just the apocalypse.

At first I thought I was witnessing some kind of blight, or tree-rot that was spreading through central Ohio this fall -- blight and other plant pathogens are known to turn plant material strange colors from time to time, so this seemed a reasonable explanation for what I was witnessing. But then, the color changes stopped, and the leaves actually started falling off the trees.

All of these trees used to have leaves on their branches. Of late, those leaves have been turning pale, dying, and falling to the ground.

Being extremely alarmed by this new phenomenon, I started checking other areas of the forest, and found that plant life of almost all sorts was being affected by whatever was killing off the trees. I went through the grasslands, and saw that they were all beige as straw -- even the phragmites in the swamp were yellow. Upon further investigation, I found that the swamp itself seemed to be receding.

Even phragmites, the most virulent of swamp weeds, that can grow almost anywhere, appeared to be dying.

This bare patch, formerly a thriving swamp with lots of turtles and malaria, seems to be drying up for some reason. The teat of mother hope has run dry.

After a thorough search of the area immediately surrounding my bridge, I was able to find very little plant life that was unaffected. I then decided to investigate the animals.

These weird, sort of dick-shaped trees appear to be fine, but surely it won’t be long until they are dead, too.

Animals are, of course, a little more scarce than plants, but I did manage to locate a few. First, I couldn’t find anything other than the super-abundant tree rats that spread disease and steal our nuts all summer long, and I thought they probably weren’t of interest. . . until I started to watch them. The tree rats seemed to be storing away food -- I actually watched one of the brainless plague-spreaders bury an acorn (or whatever the fuck they eat in the absence of oak trees). Being a wildlife expert of sorts, I found this unheard of behavior appalling. Delving deeper into the woods, I found it utterly deserted but for a lone mouse that seemed to have exploded. Whatever it was that was killing off the leaves and the trees was also killing vertebrates.

This mouse, whose guts are hanging out for some reason, is going to be part of The Shadow’s argument that everything is dying.

Backing away in disgust, I started to try to reason about these happenings -- trees were dying, tree rats were storing food as if there wouldn’t be any for months and months, mice were exploding. What could explain this? Then, I thought of the trouble we at BZ are in. After that fat fuck gave us away, I predicted that there would be retribution of some kind. The Great Ohio Power Outage seemed to be an attempt on the part of the vexed aliens to split open the larger trees and remove the intra-tree computers they had paid so dearly to have installed just to watch over us. However, after noticing all these changes, it occurred to me that that didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t they just leave them there? It’s not like you can recycle them, or sell the copper wire in them. The aliens weren’t removing the trees, they were destroying them. It seems that they are planning to systematically destroy all life on earth using the weather. Temperatures have been dropping here in central Ohio for some time, at an almost linear rate. They have already fallen low enough that plants can no longer survive. If they continue to drop at the current rate, we should freeze to death by mid January. If they stop, the food supply should run out some time next year, when we will starve to death.

So, loyal readers, one way or another, prepare to die.