How much of this is nature or God or some power bigger than Rush Limbaugh is, of course, an open question. Disaster seems always to lurk just over the horizon these days, whether it be global warming, outsourcing or the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In the old days it was something a little less ethereal, like the Nazis or the Communists, Mussolini or the Japanese Navy.

Nowadays, however, we have to contend with the West Nile virus, the bird flu, AIDS and who knows what other microscopic enemies. Makes one not want to grow up and certainly not to travel. Cruise ships get attacked by pirates (I thought pirates went out with Blackbeard and Captain Kidd). Youths of Muslim origin take a sudden disliking to French automobiles (probably because they don't have any) and torch them by the dozens.

I can remember a gentler time when all we had to worry about were flying saucers. People saw them all over the place. They used to call the newspaper where I worked to report they had seen one, two or maybe a dozen. I was somewhat reassured by the fact that anyone can see most anything in the sky if they stare at it long enough--spots, circles, saucers or what ophthalmologists call after-images.

But the skywatchers were persistent. They saw flying saucers or flying lights day and night around the clock for years.

Then we started to have an epidemic of windshield pitting. Where this aberration of nature started I don't know, but literally dozens of folks would call the paper to tell us that their windshields had been mysteriously pitted. I always wondered if perhaps the pits had been left by flying saucers. Neither the pit reporters nor the flying saucer watchers thought this was very funny (even if I did) and sometimes hung up on me.

This strange epidemic went on for a year or so after the time flying saucers came swooping through the skies all over the world abducting earthlings and giving rise to Roswell, N.M., the place the aliens and presumably the windshield pitters were all going to gather to give us a message. The message has never come through very clearly, alas, but some folks are still waiting to hear it. They get together now and then, so I understand, to exchange their versions of what the message is going to be.

Those who are waiting for "The Rapture" (that's a whole story in itself) look upon the disasters currently piling up around the world as proof that as Revelations says the Last Days are not far away. Maybe so. My only comfort about this aspect of Mother Nature's sudden set of warnings is that the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament gave the world a lot of similar signals a couple of thousand years ago. A lot of water has gone down the Jordan River since then and the Last Days still haven't arrived.

That doesn't mean, of course, that they couldn't take place today or even tomorrow. And I know I shouldn't make fun of the fate we all face sometime, the transition from this world to the next. But, of course, none of us really think it is going to happen today or tomorrow or even next week.

We still think of Mother Nature as a benign old lady who paints the leaves in the fall with brilliant reds and yellows, the lovely lady that pushes up the daffodils in the spring and unfurls the roses in the summer. I guess we think of her like Good Old Mom, about to whip up an apple pie, someone who's going to tuck us in tonight, not kick us out of bed, out of the house or (as in the case of those in New Orleans) out of town.

Maybe she is some of both. Even mothers get angry now and then and when they do it's difficult to predict how they are going to vent their anger.

Recently, I heard of one mom who, furious at her young son who had intentionally used the floor of the boys' restroom at school as the toilet, made him clean all three of the bathroom floors at home with a toothbrush.

He got the message. So should we.

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. Best instead to treat her with care and consideration.