WINNERS AND LOSERS

Rex Burress

Another irony of life is that in nearly every activity or game there is a winner and a loser. All the million-dollar ball games—baseball, football, basketball—all the horse races, car races—all depend on a winner. The winner wins because there was a loser. Ironic!

The game doesn't stop with people; all of nature swivels on a balance of winning and losing in order to succeed. The general plan seems to be for animals to eat something alive, or once alive, by killing or scavenging or browsing living plants. It seems pretty vicious out there in a world we would prefer to think of as peaceful, but living and dying and winning and losing is part of the game...nature keeping everything “whirling and flowing in endless song out of one beautiful form into another,” said John Muir.

All I know is that the red-tailed hawk soars in the sky watching the land for a mouse, or rabbit, and then once prey is spotted, dives for a catch with its talons. All of the fine details of that mouse's life, all of the effort to build a nest, all of the seeds sought for nourishment, are gone in a flash. The mouse could not win—only elude the danger to live a little longer. Did that mouse get a chance to reproduce? The hawk does not care about statistics but rather with immediate food and survival.

In going forth on a nature walk, you are sure to see some form of winning and losing wherever you look in a paradox that could also be called succeeding and failing. With every footstep you're imperiling some form of life of macro dimensions, or a sprouting seed, or larvae kind of animal, unknowingly and unavoidably if you want to break into nature and see wonders of the world. Trails are made by a multitude of mutilating footsteps, and life is designed to be replaceable.

Keeping on the winning side of life is most apparent in big families like bees and ants with fast-track reproduction to replace lives lost through accidents, predators ['Bee-martins,' skunks, herbicides, ant-eaters, flickers, and lizards all kill ants.] Your footsteps smash very few over all. There are ants that get wiped out on my kitchen counter, but a new bunch appear in no time if food is available. Food is the key to all winning and losing.

Down in the low end of the life pyramid, organisms such as fungi mycelium work quietly to produce mushroom spore cases that contain thousands of spores ready to drift away to new founding sites. The vast numbers of fruitful sexual cells are distributed by the wind, but very few find a fertile space to beget a new colony. The chance of random dispersal success is meager. The spore, and seed of plants, are very likely to land on some stretch of stone where germination and growth will not happen, and seeds are also rapidly consumed by animals and the elements.

There are many losers among sperm cells seeking an egg in a long swim, blindly thrashing toward a vague beacon, with spoils to the winner, although the winner is merely absorbed into the matrix. There seems to be no visual award for completing an assignment in nature.

With the coming of a new day, the jack rabbit knew he would have to run faster than the fox to stay alive. The fox knew he would have to run faster than the rabbit to stay alive. To one the win; to one the loss, thus it is written.

“Now this is the law of the jungle,/ As old and as true as the sky,/ And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper,/ But the wolf that shall break it shall die. As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk,/ The law runneth forward and back;/ For the strength of the pack is the wolf,/ And the strength of the wolf is the pack.” --Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936