I cooked lunch for two close chums here today, and the planning, preparation, consumption and conversation were all a genuine joy. We started off in Greece with houmus, moved on to China using marinated Nuoc Mam chicken and Duck aguillettes in plum soy sauce, and ended up back in France with flambéd apple and pear under a soft-fruit and crème fraiche topping. Although it all sounds incredibly poncey, the entire spread including booze cost a staggering €11.69 for three people. This was helped by the fact that the pudding needed only the crème fraiche, as everything else in it (apart from a glug of cooking Armagnac, a spurt of honey and some butter) came from the garden….see piccy above to prove it.
But I bring news of a much bigger nature than this: the walnut tree at the north-east end of Sloggers’ Roost is productive. Yes, a bulletin was posted on the railings this afternoon here to the effect that Walnuttree2 had given birth to a walnut. Walnuttrees 3, 4, 5 and 6 are still some way behind, but Walnuttree1 is heavily laden with produce in excess of, I would guess, some 350 big green balls. In turn – wonder of wonders – the hazelnut tree is also, for the first time ever, covered in little green balls. This follows my chain-saw attack on it last year – a final desperate attempt to get the stubbornly barren thing to produce. I don’t do subtlety in the garden: either look good, smell nice, or drop food…otherwise, you’re out mate.
However, here is tonight’s front-page lead. The pigeon chick has been reunited with his parents. When I got up at an ungodly 6am this morning, the little chap was sitting on his nest of hastily-arranged straw beneath the last rung of the spiral staircase. As I descended, he perked up and flapped about in an attempt to make good his escape. I took this as a good sign and, having inverted the washing basket in order to contain him, I decided the only option was to find mum and dad.
I’ve had six pigeons nesting here for some years, and so it seemed like fate when I saw – on my way to the compost heap – two adults sitting on the telephone wire at the front of the house. Carrying out the grounded infant, I offered him up for their consideration, and then placed him gently under the cover of a large bush by the steps leading to the pool.
The birds-on-a-wire reacted in the manner of a senior Chinese diplomat being offered Italian debt bonds by Herman van Rompuy. A profound level of inscrutability was involved, and shortly afterwards they flew off. But about an hour later, I noticed one of the birds flapping about just above the chick’s hiding place.
At just after 9.30 am, mum spotted her baby and called him out. As I watched, awestruck, the little one flapped about excitedly, and instantly mater popped her beak into his. Hubby arrived in due course with more fare, which was duly pre-masticated by his missus, and popped into the chick’s open gob. It is pathetic I know, but I was near to tears.
It’s now 7.50 pm CET. The parents are on the roof of the pool pump-house, and mum is making regular trips down to the steps to keep Junior well-supplied with well-chewed protein. It is, of course, a long way from being a result: the fledgling is still not airborne (or anywhere near it) and thus remains prone to the nose of any four-legged predator. But the parents are on the case. They will stay on the case until their progeny has either been killed, or learned to look after itself.
On writing that last line, I find myself pondering on the nature of easily impregnated bints and feckless dick-happy blokes from the unfortunate species Homo sapiens. There is not a snowball’s chance in Hell that either pigeon parent will decide to nip down the Putin & Draghi for a few swift pints of Tennents Super. They may not have, as Joni Mitchell once sang, “a piece of paper from the City Hall” keeping them tied and true, but they are wired to be steadfast. Today, human parents are culturally feckless. We would all do well to analyse why this is.
While I’m relaxed about the social stability of Pigeonville, I have my doubts about Mouse City. The conditions in my home are near-perfect for the establishment of rodent invasion: lots of upturned furniture and cloth covers beneath which they can hide…plus a regular supply of builders’ half-eaten Twix bars. All this is leading up to the fact that I have a mouse-pair in residence; and as they’re accustomed to loud voices, noisy drills, four-letter swearing or even trilingual communication, they do not react with fear when confronted by humans. This means it will take a lot to evict them, and traps may in the end be the only way.
I have always hated mousetraps. I don’t mind the idea of killing vermin that threaten public health, but the mousetrap rarely delivers a clean kill: I have had too many traumatic experiences of coming back to mouse-ridden flats in my youth to find terrified animals with legs, ears and tails stuck under snap-down zappers. There is a trap now that simply imprisons them so one can drive ten miles and then dump the captives in a field. But this is simply passing on the problem to someone else. Our planet is, whether we like it or not, a sphere of limited size upon which there is only room for a finite number of us. Neither Homo fecunditas nor Mus musculus seems able to grasp this. It is perhaps the one thing that binds us, as this shot of one mouse litter amply illustrates:
Left to themselves in a cosy environment, one pair of mice will overrun the place very quickly. Mice have up to 32 babies in a litter, and the gestation period in mice from conception to birth is around 20 days. Those of you with knowledge of exponential maths will know where that ends up after just twelve months: in one year with no predators, a pair of little house mice can result in thousands of offspring.
What they won’t do, of course, is invent atomic bombs, suggest globalist business is the only way forward, develop the internet, produce braindead talent shows, market mass media, or try to persuade anyone that 1-1 = 6. And so for that reason alone, perhaps, we should live with them…and let live. My tactic here has been, and will be, to keep them out of the house, and let them have their fair share of garden produce.
But even allowing for that level of tolerance, there’s a big difference between the output of one walnut in nine years, and 30,000 sh*tting machines in one year. One needs to maintain a sense of balance in all things.
Earlier at The Slog: God save us from lachrymose hypocrisy
Filed under: At the End of the Day Tagged: mouse musings, pigeon fancying, The fruits of the garden 