Cancel Dolphins: New Earth Day Faves for a Fucked-up World
Tired: Trees
Full of acorn-obsessed squirrels and hooting owls, they dominate Earth Day and Arbor Day. Apples and rainforests, maple syrup and campfires. But raking sucks, and a homicidal response to excessive leaf blower usage is legally justified in all fifty states. In April and May I can barely open my swollen red eyes thanks to billowing pollen. Look, trees, my nasal cavities don’t want to be part of your freaky sex thing.
Wired: Algae
Microscopic snacks for baleen whales and giant kelp blankies for otters. You know where trees came from? Algae. You know what’s never fallen on my house and knocked out power to the whole neighborhood? Algae. You know what’s never been turned into paper to print The Art of the Deal? Algae. You know what produces 72% of the world’s oxygen but doesn’t get its own special day? That’s right, motherfucking algae.
Tired: Monarch Butterflies
What’s orange and black and kindergarten craft all over? Lepidoptera. Yeah, they fly three thousand miles to Mexico for winter break, but so did I and you don’t hear me going on about it. If you peek under those fluttery wings, they’re all black stick legs and wriggling, pulsing thoraxes. Pass.
Wired: Earwigs
Bugs, but heavy metal and down to party. With those pincers you know they’re into some dark shit, and the males have penises the size of their body. Twice as long as the female’s body. Don’t ask how that works, because I don’t know and my search history is dodgy enough as it is. You want to know, you look it up.
Tired: Metamorphic Rocks
They were formed by tremendous, mind-boggling forces, pressure stronger than familial expectations. They’ve shrugged off the heat and chilled with the glaciers. But what have they done for you lately?
Wired: Mud
I can tell you what mud’s done for me lately: It trapped my car for a day and I got to skip work. Ate a whole pack of Oreos and binged Our Flag Means Death. Thanks, mud.
Tired: Lions
Rulers of the savannah, etc. Manes for days and fluffy cubs. What’s that, National Geographic? The girly lions do all the work? And get none of the credit? How surprising and original. Get your own shtick, lions.
Wired: Weasels
Slinky, rounded ears. Impossibly adorable when they peer around corners, which based on my image search, they do a lot. Carnivorous. Before they bite through the head of their prey, they do a little dance to confuse it. Dinner and a show.
Tired: Dolphins
Rubbery, snobby little bastards who brag about echolocating fish. The stuff of Lisa Frank’s rainbow nightmares and my grandmother’s cheap crystal tchotchkes, like the one I accidentally-on-purpose broke at Christmas when she made pointed comments about my biological clock. I hid the shards in a potted poinsettia, a plant whose name I can never pronounce, which makes me hate dolphins even more.
Wired: Coked-Up Orcas
We know they’re coming after rich assholes’ yachts. What if, when they sank one, they got into the good stuff? Let’s find out—gotta be at least as entertaining as that bear.
Tired: The Atlantic Ocean
Wild and gorgeous but it sank the Titanic and sucked down Amelia Earhart. Not to blame for the brutality and tragedy of the Middle Passage, but not not to blame either, if you ask me. Full of dolphins.
Wired: The Drainage Ditch on I-95
Sure, it’ll kill the odd driver from time to time. But if it’s wet enough, spotted salamanders will lay eggs there. They’ll hatch into little tadpoles, metamorphosize, and then sneak back into the forest. Salamanders are a goddamn delight, you can’t tell me otherwise.
Tired: Bald Eagles
We get it, you’re big, you have terrifying hooked beaks, you’ve got white feathers on your heads. Go fuck up someone else’s country now.
Wired: Those Little Birds You Find At Burger King
Have you seen one of these guys eat a fry? They don’t need fancy sonar to find dinner and they’re not stuck up either. If you’re fast, you can pet them. Like seriously, they don’t care. The CDC says songbirds don’t usually carry bird flu, or at least that’s what I found on their recently archived webpage.
Possibly-pettable birds are the best we can do for Earth Day 2025.