Just about definitionally, living systems are the movement of energy, more or less in response to the perpetual circulation of energy in the universe. Where there is less available energy, living things can move to better preserve their internal energy levels, whereas where there is too much energy, living things can move to disperse that energy or avoid its spillover into their internals.
This becomes more difficult the faster the energy moves. This principle is quite vivid in the movement of the slugs, especially this season, where with the sudden inundation of wet weather and rainfall, slug populations exploded and expanded outward. At a certain point they were everywhere, cruising merrily along the moist grasses and soil, nibbling on the preponderance of fresh vegetation.
And then just as suddenly, an abnormal heat wave came on and the searing sun caught many of the slugs in their tracks: you could see their fresh slime trails leading to their desiccated corpses. They were caught out of cover as the heat came on too quick, drying out in the sun. Sheared by those gaps opened up by energy and matter moving too much too soon.
And in the Pacific Northwest, where people are not as used to higher temperatures, they are caught out in infrastructure and hung up in local and cultural techniques deficient in dealing with higher heat. And then there are the drownings in the rivers swelling with the previous rains and melting glaciers and snowpack.
