Critters III

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!