Friday Five – Garbage

It’s Friday, so it must be time for The Friday Five writing prompt! Five different words each week to get the creative juices flowing. To visit the other participants, click here.

This week’s words are: flood, chorus, pollution, sacred, childish

A flood of tears fell from my eyes as I looked at the seventh albatross chick today with a belly full of microplastics that ultimately killed her — death from starvation, despite her full belly. Of all the pollution in the world, plastics make me the angriest. In my job, I process animal after animal with injuries from plastic or do necropsies on those that died, to prove cause of death. My techs and I constantly share this information, but our chorus of pleas fall on deaf ears. The only thing that is sacred these days is the almighty dollar, so cruise lines, navy vessels, corporations all throw childish temper tantrums when any kind of restriction is placed on their ability to dump their waste in our oceans. All life on earth is dependent on water, and so polluting it so massively makes no sense to me at all. I do all I can to educate people, one-by-one, and to save the creatures I can. I wish I could do more, but at least I do what I can.

NOTE: If you’re interested in the effects of ocean pollution, Google “the great pacific garbage patch”. Or click on this link here for a small crash course and this link here about the effect on albatross chicks. Those are only a sample of the damage plastic, in particular, is doing to our environment.