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Let’s
all step back for just one blasted moment to acknowledge that the critters who
share our planet with us don’t necessarily deserve our unconditional affection,
appreciation, and protection. Although I very much wish to preserve endangered
species, I recognize that I might feel differently if preservation of elephants,
sea turtles, whales, tigers, and polar bears was happening in my personal back
yard. Fortunately it is not. So I continue to love elephants dearly, and the
shrinking of their numbers breaks my heart; and I love whales, and it breaks my
heart that they lose their way, beach, and die. But let me be clear that I do
not love whatever is climbing and dismembering my fruit trees and kiwi vines at
night. I feel quite sure that elephants and whales have not caused this
destruction, although it looks like the work of large mammals of land or sea.
My best guess is either raccoons or wild turkeys. I don’t think foxes climb
trees, I am fairly certain that opossums don’t do this level of damage, and I
think beavers live in ponds. I sincerely would not mind if whatever is doing
this damage became extinct. This afternoon, in fact. I would never miss these
creatures. If I ever become nostalgic for small creatures that decimate
gardens, I will watch outdated whimsical Disney movies.
My
cherry trees are still struggling to recover from the damage done to them by
beasts last year. Now these beasts have returned to continue their evil work.
They must have slouched out of DC, where the powers have barred mercy and
compassion from the vocabulary in an effort to erase them. The beasts (in my
back yard, not in DC) broke one cherry tree in half the other night. How fat
can you get foraging fruit out of people’s yards? Some fat creature sat in that
tree and took eight feet off its height. They have also destroyed both small
and large branches on all three cherry trees. Plus, they trashed the kiwis to eat
the blossoms. Blossoms! The kiwis had not even fruited. Obviously these
critters recently completed the online Scott Pruitt Destroy-the-Planet course.
They act no better than ignorant humans: fouling the nest, destroying resources that would
otherwise have lasted for centuries. I wouldn’t mind if the critters simply ate
some of the cherries and left me a handful. I get it. We all love fruit. I
don’t mind sharing, but they won’t share. The cherries weren’t even ripe. Unlike
peaches or pears, cherries and kiwis can’t be harvested early and left out to
ripen on the countertop. They don’t work that way. So I can’t even pick them
early to have a few for myself. These satanic predators devoured unripe
cherries.
I
would even accept my fate as a hapless gardener if the beasts ate the fruit and
left the trees intact. But no. They had to break the branches off. Seriously? To
get at a handful of cherries? Ten years ago I planted a lovely little honey
crisp apple tree, and during its first summer, some critter, probably a wild
turkey with evil glittering eyes, parked a jeep on the top of that tree and
broke it in half. It didn’t even have any fruit on it. It never recovered. Those
wild turkeys need an intervention. Someone needs to point out to them that they
are birds, not bears. My cherry trees look like a bear climbed in them. Whatever
did this damage, raccoon or wild turkey or other, didn’t even have the decency
to finish eating the cherries, but left many half-gnawed on the tree. This was
not the work of ants or aphids. Ants and aphids don’t break off the branches.
Honestly, if you think the story of Peter Rabbit is adorable and amusing, then
you better have another think coming. Peter Rabbit is not a cute bunny. He’s
the devil incarnate.
If
you are a city dweller who has watched too many Looney Tunes, you might suggest
that I should put up scarecrows. Let me school you about scarecrows. I once put
scarecrows on my deck when I lived out on the land at the Ranch to keep the
wild turkeys out of my flower barrels and my grape vines lacing overhead on lattice.
I put scary Halloween masks on the scarecrows. One of those masks was so scary
that I had to hide my eyes while I put it on the scarecrow and I had nightmares
from looking at it between my fingers. The only one scared was me. The turkeys gleefully
kicked the heads off those scarecrows and played soccer with them in the yard. Then
they dug into the scarecrow bodies and pulled out the newspaper stuffing, after
which they scratched up my flowers and herbs in the barrels. I tried playing the
radio all night on a boom box out there because I read that noise would deter
them. Hah. Not true. The turkeys brought sheet music to sing along, and it was
all just karaoke after that. They pulled down the grape arbors while dancing with
abandon and pooping industriously all over the deck. No bird should be allowed
to formulate poop as big as turkey poop. Furthermore, wild turkeys cannot take
a hint. One Thanksgiving we had a turkey roasting in the oven with the fragrant
scent filling the house and wafting into the yard; and even so, a troupe of at
least thirty oblivious wild turkeys sauntered past the kitchen window booping,
pooping, and scratching up my plants. Wild turkeys are impervious, destructive,
vicious, useless varmints, who have sold their souls to Satan, and I wish they
would all be universally and instantaneously swallowed up by sink holes and
melted down in the earth’s inner lava layers.
At
least at my current residence, I rarely have to contend with the deer like I
used to when I lived out on the land at the Ranch. The deer can’t get into my fenced
back yard here, but they do roam the front like brainless alien zombie dead;
and they came onto my front porch and chowed down on my hydrangeas before they
could bloom. Who let deer on this planet? I don’t see their contribution. Even
plants touted as “deer resistant” turn out to have been falsely advertised. It
does no good to leave the label reading “deer resistant” on them because the
useless varmints are illiterate.
Last
winter I wanted to grow a cover crop of legumes in my back yard vegetable
gardens. They are protected from the deer, however a mysterious vegetable
predator chewed up the whole crop right down to the nub; ate all the leaves and
gnawed the stem to nothing. I have no idea if it was an animal, bird, insect, rock,vegetable-seeking
drone, flying cow, or velociraptor. I suspect it was something small that crept
out of the soil (do mushrooms creep at night?), but nothing I did could deter
it, whatever it was. Did you know that in one night a green hornworm can
decimate a tomato plant lovingly cultivated from seed for months and months? If
I had invented the planet, I would have made wild turkeys eat nothing but green
hornworms. This seems obvious, and it’s the main reason I don’t believe in a
god because no deity or immortal being could be this stupid and inefficient.
Although, I will cede that perhaps I have overlooked the possibility that god
is a hedgehog.
I
recently attended a workshop about taking action to address climate change. It
baffles me that humans have put so much energy into bringing the whole
ecosystem crashing down on ourselves when we already face such an uphill battle
surviving on the planet with so many inherent obstacles to overcome merely to
eat and drink. Most humans operate under the assumption that we are the top
species and this amorphous entity called “nature” exists to bend to our will,
desires, and needs. Well, news flash. We have it all wrong; we are the bottom
of the heap. The rest of nature is presently conspiring to vote us off the
planet. And they will soon be successful. We think we are destroying the planet
when in fact we are simply making it uninhabitable for human life, not all
life. The trees and critters gleefully rejoice more with each passing day as
our downfall approaches. They can’t wait for us to poison ourselves and vanish.
So
I have a question for you wily, destructive raccoons, greedy leaf-eating
insects, inane turkeys, and idiot deer:
Who will grow gardens for you when people are gone? Who will plant corn,
which requires a person to cultivate it? You stupid wild turkeys have no idea
how to grow corn. You stupid raccoons don’t get that kiwis are not indigenous
to California and you guys don’t know how to build a boat to go to New Zealand to
find a kiwi. You think you’re so smart, you raccoons, turkeys, and whatever
else is trashing my yard, but you will live to regret you ever broke a branch
from one of my cherry trees. I won’t live to see it. I’ll be extinct. But right
now, right here, just you watch me laugh at the thought of you guys having to
subsist on blackberries, acorns, and poison oak salads because you have no one
to bring water to a summer garden or an orchard in heat-baked California. Enjoy
having the planet all to yourselves, you idiots.
This persistent and stupid raccoon was in the news this week for scaling a building in
St. Paul. Eventually humans trapped the raccoon and released it in the wild.
Fine with me so long as it doesn't turn up in my back yard.
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