h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An hour or virtuous liberty is worth an eternity of bondage

One of the advantages of living in the country is an intimate view of the diminishing wildlife around us. My first encounter with a stoat was whilst painting the gable end of my house. I did that most dangerous of painter’s tricks, I leaned out to try and paint the bit on the corner without moving the ladder. As I peered around there were a pair of dark brown stoats wrestling on the lawn. These were males determined to prove a point and become top creature on my lawn. I coughed inadvertently and they stopped, looked up at the heavens and took flight. Later I saw on of them, or maybe a relation, hunting baby rabbits in the field. From my vantage point I could see the whole endeavor. The stoat would stand on its haunches and look for ears for a moment and then go bounding off in that direction. The rabbits, meanwhile, took it in turns to stick their ears up and then frolic away. When energy was exhausted on both sides they all sat and preened, hardly two metres away from each other.
I found the stoat dead and maggoty a few days later in the far corner of my garden and buried it under a pear tree.

On one occasion a shrew ventured into my house in search of insects and slugs. After some histrionics I cornered the creature with my shadow bird hands and it promptly jumped at me and sunk its tiny teeth into the flap of skin twixt thumb and forefinger, then defied all efforts to remove it. The eventual solution was to take my new attachment outside and drag it through the wet grass until it realized there was a chance to run and survive.....so it did. I on the other hand went for the tetanus injection.

One bright summers day a squirrel took up residence in my kitchen. Not by design but with the compliments of the black cat as a contribution to my dinner table. It hid in the gap at the top of the fridge and I unceremoniously set about removing it with a broom handle. Now the thing about a squirrel is that it is designed to go up..... In the absence of trees it ran up me, up my wife and daughter, inflicting terror on the five year old and not a little discomfort to the rest of us. The final solution? Learn to live with it. Open the windows and the door and be prepared to live with it until it found a better home. Whilst doing this I had to keep watch on the cat for obvious reasons. Sure enough within a couple of hours of being left alone the squirrel left and the cat slept the sleep of the righteous.

The other cat presented me with pheasant on one occasion. There was a dispute as to who had caught whom. The cat was on the pheasants back clutching at its neck feathers. When the pheasant became strong sand rejuvenated it would stand up and carry the cat back towards the field, then as the pheasant weakened the cat dragged it back again to the house. Eventually the sheer weight of the cat and its better armaments had won the day. As the only acknowledged super power in the region I took the pheasant and released it back into the field and gave the cat a compensatory feed of sardines.

In the summer roe deer wandered freely through my garden. They strip the bark off my fruit trees and trample the hedges. Last year they brought a beautiful fawn with them. A creature the size of a little lamb. It frisked around its parents as they stripped and killed my fruit trees. When they had eaten their fill they quietly wandered off into the forest and were never seen again. I replaced the trees but to this day I have never replaced the memory of that beautiful little creature in its natural home.

I have another squirrel who eats my strawberries. He is very discerning. He will take a bite out of each until he discovers the exact flavour that he is looking for and then eat the winning strawberry in one hit, placing the stem on the ground beside him. He will then move to the next plant and repeat the process. Why do I plant the strawberries? Well, for the squirrel, obviously.

A few years ago a badger found a bumblebee nest in the edge of my back lawn. It was about ten o'clock at night. I almost let the dog out as he was getting very agitated but something stopped me. When I switched off the light and looked through the curtains I saw the rear end of a badger and the mound of earth that had been my lawn. We watched him for an hour. The children all went quietly outside and sat within a few metres of this industrious creature. Eventually he got his honey and left. In the morning I filled the hole and said a few words for the poor bumble bee. The dip in the lawn remains to this day, a reminder of good times past.

This morning I found that ants had invaded my kitchen. It has been cold and wet outside so they were looking for better living quarters. I killed them of course. So why did my tolerance not extend to the poor ants? They were following their instincts to find a drier nest. The problem is that I am of a species that writes rules. They are our rules. They are shaped to our exclusive advantage. We do not tell the ants or the badgers about these rules but we punish them for breaking them. We lay unilateral claim to areas of land. Build walls and create fences, lay minefields of ant powder and designate green lines that the wild creatures shall not be permitted to cross. We are the cat, now ascendant dragging the pheasant in from its field. We are the creatures that back the shrew into a corner and then scream with surprise when it bites us.

One day there will be no more squirrels eating our strawberries, no more badgers digging up our lawns and no more displaced ants struggling against overwhelming odds to regain their lost homes.

When that day comes we will declare great victories and pronounce the world a safer place.

When that day comes I do not want to be part of it. I would rather die in a world where the ant can bite my foot, where the fawn eats the bark of my trees than live in a world of oppression.


Doctor Carlyle Ferris