Critters III
We all eat something.
What do azaleas eat? People often talk of fertilizing
their plants but I never hear of plants “eating”. Your plant's
breakfast is crucial to their happiness for the soil is their
restaurant.
People won't talk about the end result of eating,
excrement. At least not in mixed company. At least not in the US.
But people extol the virtues of compost and humus, much of it the
excrement from tiny creatures eating organic matter. Oxygen is
another vital endproduct, produced by plants and required by animal
life.
{ Major digression from the theme: I believe that
talking to your house plants is good for them. Bend low so that
you're staring the white flies and aphids in the face and tell your
plants how they have the power to be whatever they wish! Oh, wait,
that's for encouraging children. No, tell them that they have the
power within themselves to grow as if they were in a rain-forest.
Or, explain to them, kindly that they'd better start growing or
you'll get violent! Either way carbon dioxide is pouring from your
mouth, an ingredient that the plants slurp up in exchange for the
release of oxygen. Win-win. And, while you're there, spray for the
white flies. }
People are squeamish about tiny bugs and bacteria, but
a gardener will happily show you his compost pile, produced by those
bugs and bacteria. And their dead bodies merge with the digested
constituents of the fallen leaves creating black gold. If left alone
for a while that compost becomes even more valuable as humus, a
dense, slightly gelatinous pile of lignins (the tissue making woody
plants “woody”), complex sugars and proteins. I've heard people
described as “happy as pigs in slop” but if I then said they were
as “happy as rhododendron tsutsutsi in humus” I would be banned
from the bar.
The fine nature writer Annie Dillard described leaning
over a rocky ledge and seeing a snake below, sunning itself. With a
mosquito perched on its nose, ready to dive into its midday snack.
We all eat something.
The plantain and dandelions in my lawn, loved by
rabbits, eat the materials in the soil, much of which is naturally
composted from whatever falls there.
Caterpillars eat the leaves of almost everything, from
spring to fall. Birds rely on those caterpillars through much of the
year, though especially for their nestlings.
The stray cats, which I chase around the yard, look for
the birds, squirrels and those rabbits.
The foxes dig large holes in the compost pile and are
delighted when they run into the cats, birds, squirrels and rabbits.
The Red-tailed and Red-shouldered hawks that cruise
through the trees would happily take any from that menu, though an
adult fox would give them pause.
The raccoons and possums hunt mice in the leaf litter.
Those raccoons and possums are, in turn, hunted by cars, at least in
my experience.
The mice are themselves looking for worms, bugs and
beetles. And the worms, bugs and beetles believe my
compost is heaven. I thought it was really cool, once, to dig through the pile
and come up with a Unicorn Beetle. Two inches long, including scary
looking horns, but harmless to a huge, top of the food-chain being
such as myself.
Everything in the yard is eating something. What do I
eat there? I snag a few wild blackberries, though I'm always late to
the banquet. The squirrels and birds fill up first. Crab apples,
wild cherries and a pear tree produce fruit in the late summer, but
these volunteers are not among the commercial varieties and have very
little flesh. Still, the taste is there.
In the end, as most of you, I don't really want to kill
and then gut my dinner, disposing of the bloody carcass in the back
40. I don't even have a back 40. I drive down the highway to
the supermarket.
My garden is a restaurant, currently enjoyed by
millions of other life forms, and that's just fine!
