The Atlantis Situation
April 1, 2010
Filed under News, Top Stories, Uncategorized
I would like to talk to you about ducks. While seemingly harmless and docile creatures, these terrors of the water hide a subtle but disastrous habit. Their main source of food is a particular worm that lives buried under the mud at the bottom of marshes. Often the constant digging for worms erodes the soil considerably, but the number of ducks is almost always too few to do any permanent damage.
Unfortunately, extensive conservation programs on the marsh situated below Le Jardin Academy have made the population of ducks skyrocket. The ducks are busy digging away for worms in the soil at an alarming rate. So alarming in fact, it has ignited considerable debate as to whether the ground that Le Jardin sits on will start to slide down the hill into the marsh.
Dubbed as “The Atlantis Situation” this issue surfaced after the recent construction of the stairs by the high school gym. However, suspicions of this calamity have been around since the construction of the new buildings. “When we started to dig the foundations for the gym we found the soil to be loose, looser than it should be in this area…” commented Mr. D. S. Citroen, Construction Manager of Taseai Construction, “and the construction of the stairs recently showed us finally that something was horribly wrong.”
A preliminary look into the problem done by local scientists found the source of the problem to be the soil erosion from ducks. Unfortunately the type of duck solely responsible for the damage is an endangered species and thus cannot be tampered with. As the population of these dreadful fowl grows exponentially, the soil under our school will get ever more perilous.
A land survey team made a projection of the possible damage over time and their forecast is sobering. Their study: Le Jardin and the history of Atlantis, illustrates the coming danger. In one month, they project that Kapa’a quarry road will start to show signs of visible damage. In two months the road will be almost completely unusable due to cracks in the asphalt and the main gate will also start to show signs of damage. From there the erosion will accelerate drastically after the two and a half month range. The lower school will be first building to become structurally compromised with each other building following in a horrific domino-like fashion. Obviously this means that classes towards the end of the year will be interrupted, plans have not yet been finalized as to how to deal with the lack of classes.
When asked about the disaster the Le Jardin administration denied any knowledge of the problem but would like to assert their strong opposition to the anti-hunting laws in Kailua.
This problem cannot be over stated. Can the school deal with the aftermath? Perhaps, the ultimate lesson to learn from this is that with all of our needs to conserve the natural world around us, we can’t forget about the dangers of careless conservationism.
For further details and information please contact BNN with your concerns.