As a diversion from my recent posts about human evolution, I’d like to get opinions on a literary theme of mine -- i.e. nature will punish humans for the cruel treatment of the animals and nature herself.

My Facebook account shows a picture of Nemesis, the granddaughter of Gaia who is the Greek concept of the world. Nemesis is the Goddess of Vengeance and in my writings I state how she is irate to say the least.

In my first book, Mirror Reversal, I describe how my heroine Cynthia, an evolutionary biology professor, had a profound, Jane Goodall-type, love of the bee hummingbird that she studied in the Amazon Rain Forest of Peru. The bird is a living Peter Pan Tinkerbell, an aped, as big as your thumb that feeds on small insects and aids in the reproductive cycle of the passion flower, one of nature’s must magnificent. It has a long peak to suck nectar.

To recapitulate the history of the bird, Cynthia was heartbroken because the bird was driven to near extinction because Victorian ladies were fond of wearing mummified hummingbirds in their Easter bonnet. Over 800 species of the family Trochilidae were reduced to under 300 that there are today – all to make a holiday fashion statement.

Profound beauty wasn’t the only feature of these birds. They were experts in aeronautics as researchers document that they’ve seen the bee hummingbird do somersaults and fly upside when startled.

No wonder Nemesis is angry. Perhaps coronavirus is just the start of the goddess’ revenge on humankind? We are in the middle of the Antropocene Extinction, the last extinction was 65,000,000 years ago.