Watching the news broadcasts, reading the horrifying accounts of the oil slick reaching the Louisiana coast line, I keep hearing the words “drill baby drill” pound in my mind. Doesn’t matter who offered the term, Democrats and Republicans alike, it just makes me sick. Now that we know it’s enormity could surpass the spill of the Exxon Valdez, you wonder if we will ever learn from our mistakes. “Oh, don’t worry. Drilling in the Oceans, the Gulf and the Arctic is safe. No worries.”

I thought about piling on in this post, highlighting the politics, leveling blame for all those involved but I figure Huff, Drudge, Fox, CNN and the like will pick up my slack. If it takes months, as some are now predicting, for BP to cap the submerged leak, there will be plenty of anger and accusation to go around. The blame game is just beginning.

Instead, I wanted to share a picture  I took last year in South Florida focusing on the predator and prey relationships in the great circle of life. This truly once in a lifetime shot is replayed around our planet trillions of times a day, where one life in the food chain takes its turn as food the other is briefly sustained. The hunter and the hunted play their rolls and Nature moves on.

Gulf Oil Slick and the Grim Reaper

I’ve often looked at this photo, wondering about the bird and the fish squarely looking each other in the eye. In that instant, they exchange glances just as death prolongs life.

I guess you can blame Mother Nature for Hurricane Katrina, after all, the winds and waves are natural events.  But this time, the devastation of that region of the Gulf Coast is our fault. We did this. Think of the Life that we destroyed there.

Death maybe a natural occurrence, but this destruction is ours to own. Who will we look in the eye?

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