AMPUS, France — Hulking boar called sangliers and assorted rodents dominated high-country Provençal fauna when I came here in the 1980s. The pigs trampled rock terraces and uprooted plants. Rats infested homes and barns. They were no big deal.

Olive groves, amber waves of grain and vineyards thrived with reliable winter cold snaps and tolerably hot summers. Rivers swelled in spring. Snowmelt recharged the eau de la montagne subsurface water that Marcel Pagnol made famous.

All creatures great and small ate their fill. Hunter friends grilled sanglier chops on olivewood coals. Miranda the cat kept rodents on the run. We barely noticed early shifts in biodiversity as nature began culling humans from the mix.

Today, Porcus trumpus and Rattus muskiana, invasive subspecies from North America, threaten Provence and everywhere else. The risk goes far beyond ecological balance. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have my vote as the two most dangerous men on Earth.

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WILD OLIVES, France — Finally, a gleam of hope tinged with euphoria cut through despair down my rutted road in deepest Provence.

America soon might have a leader who speaks plainly and carries a big law book. Its porcine ex-president, intent on an Orwellian Animal Farm where self-anointed pigs rule hapless beasts of burden, now faces a border collie with a taste for pork chops.

Kamala Harris is ready to take on the world. She works hard in the shadows to rally allies and face down adversaries. Joe Biden, spared backbiting from faithless politicians and gotcha reporters, can be a wise old dog who teaches her his old tricks.

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GENEVA — On a planet already gasping for air while playing nuclear chicken in unwinnable wars between the despotic and the desperate, shunting aside Joe Biden as a doddering has-been would be about the dumbest thing imaginable.

His normal aging is different from the pathology of a malevolent sociopath who feeds off vengeful destruction. Yet the media mainstream relays Donald Trump’s venom with little comment while zeroing in on every tic and twitch of a remarkably effective leader.

In today’s world, there is no time for on-the-job training. If Biden must cede the Oval Office to Kamala Harris, she is ready. Allies and adversaries alike take her seriously. With his counsel, contacts and aides already in place, she can provide vital continuity.

But Democrats squabble over untested candidates — that circular firing squad Barack Obama warned of in 2016. Too many unreliable sources confuse inattentive voters. That favors Trump and a corrupted party with elaborate plans to cripple democracy.

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PARIS — Ronald Reagan moistened every eye within earshot atop that Normandy cliff in 1984, mine included: “In this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for.”

He was an actor who played president masterfully but had little grasp of the world he steered off course. On D-Day four decades later, Joe Biden was brief and low-key. An actual statesman, he said what is essential at the most perilous time in human history.

The men who died capturing Pointe du Hoc, he said, now summon us: “They ask us what we will do. They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs, but they’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for.”

As a reporter, I’ve watched “morning in America” darken toward midnight in a wider world spinning out of control. Americans have four months to do what Samuel L. Jackson urged when the danger was only George W. Bush: Wake the Fuck Up.