The Neverthelessness of Nature

I was terrified as a child by an episode of the Swiss Family Robinson where the island inexplicably became overrun by ants, chewing through the jungle like a loaf of bread.  Even then, I considered how strange it is that in nature something as horrorific as that could happen out of balance with the way things were supposed to.  We like to think of ourselves as lion tamers in relation to nature, but every so often the lion takes a chunk of us in its jaws, and ants for no known reason spill over the land like pestilence.