The meaning of life?
Buglife, the insect conservation outfit, is urging that we stop swatting wasps and start “wafting” them instead. Some insects including some sorts of wasp are, according to Buglife, endangered species.
In terms of endangered, I little thought that a decision to trim the verges in the veg garden yesterday afternoon could endanger anything. I was wrong.
Racing along with my long handled sheers slashing the long overhangs of grass…I was suddenly aware of something hopping away across the freshly hoed earth. I looked harder – it was a toad moving in a very awkward way. Oh heavens – its front right hand leg had gone, and was a bleeding stump.
I had slashed its leg off. It was me, I have done this awful thing. I wrestled with whether to kill it. It’s a sentient being, it can feel pain – that much I know – can it form a view as to whether it wants to live?
What can it have made of my vast sheers? Whilst considering the brain power of a toad, it disappeared beneath the rhubarb leaves and I didn’t see it again.
Could I have killed it anyway? I hate killing anything larger than one of Buglife’s treasured wasps.
Retiring to the grass for a much needed lie down, I consider the state of the world. All this fuss for a disabled toad.
A large passenger aircraft drifts quietly overhead high in the afternoon sunshine.
Suddenly I fall to thinking about how vulnerable, small, and forlorn the glittering object is. It is impossible to imagine the ranks of passengers, of whom I was one, crossing the Atlantic only last week. It is beyond my ability to marry what I see flying above me, with the vast flying saloon full of humans in which I was seated only seven days ago.
I am left ruminating upon how simple and complex life is – how much of it we take it for granted, and how little each of us really knows about how it all works.
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There are 23 comments on this post
“It is beyond my ability to marry what I see flying above me, with the vast flying saloon full of humans in which I was seated only seven days ago.”
So much flows from this. I wonder what choices we would make, if we always had to confront the victims of our actions face to face?
Jon, that Toad will come and get you when you least expect it!
Seriously, your blog is great for getting people to appreciate the fragile micro & macro ecosystem we share. Man has affected the planet is so many negative ways yet, there is still hope for educating people and pricking their concious thoughts to respect the wildlife. The more adults adopt a caring attitude towards ‘mother earth’, the better the future will be when children adopt these ways as ‘normal’.
My wife used to swat Wasps and crush spiders until we had a very serious blazing argument over it. I said she was setting a bad example to our children and that she had to adopt a different strategy to overcome her fears. We bought a few ‘Bug Catchas’ from Kleeneeze/Bettaware and these have been brilliant. Our daughters love wildlife and respects ‘Gaia’ or ‘Mother Earth’. We are not religious and, we now promote respect, recycling and alternative energy. We try to draw attention to population explosion and talk about its consequences.
Thanks for your blog Jon.
And what a paradox.. nothing specific, the whole darn play.
Before going to the wards yesterday , I tried to catch up on a little gardening following the wash out month of August.. my oh my … I will do the easy bit first, so I trotted around to the front triangle and started moving some shrubs around digging and pulling and generally scratching my hands to pieces.
I saw a strange thing and I had just sliced it in half….it didn’t bleed and looked like pictures I have seen of snakes; can’t be.
It must of been a caterpillar type thing as it had large eyes on a rounded head in comparison to its body. I felt like a muderer. It was destined to metamorphise into one of those beautiful moths/ butterflys with huge eyes on its vibrantly couloured wings and I had slain the beauty.
Many wouldn’t ‘hurt a fly ‘..these parts of nature shouldn’t be disregarded as ‘only this’ or ‘only that’ for our whole ecosystem and our own full existence relies on the balance of nature , YET and big YET ,its probably not sensible to harbour guilt for some unintentional harm we may do our fellow creatures.Intention to do harm is the differentiation between the deliberate act of malice /accident
which brings things nicely to the subject of Euthanasia – we have our own lives – they are ours – weown our lives – and should if we so wish be allowed to mercifully termiante it when ever we choose – not be subject to religous or any other nutcases . As for human life being special – the only thing special about it is – we came first in the evolutionary race – and what a fine job we have made of the achievment . I was at an agricutural show at weekend – and the non human animals were beautiful – the ugliest[ in every possible senses ] animals there were the humans .
This is another example of this foolish women getting her tenses mixed. ‘Must of been’ .. if something has been then it is not ‘of’
For goodness sake.. if I generally took more care and reread these comments I wouldn’t make myself look so incompetent . I don’t mind the odd typo, but when it appears that grammatically I don’t know the difference ..oooo embarrassment.. Is that how you spell embarrass? must go back to school , ribbons and sticky out skirts to the rescue.
What a great symbol Jon. We are all the unfortunate toad while you play the part of Cameron-Clegg-Osborne, well intentioned but ultimately about to chop off our legs and not sure whether to put us out of our misery or just let us limp falornley through life.
Good news that wasps are endangered. They are completely useless but harmful – back to C-C-O.
Typical of you old Socialist .Serious subjects have to be turned into politics of envy.The coalition are like an animal sanctury but rescuing mankind
Margaret .I was not insinuating that Jon is Mr Toad.I didn’t see about the extinction of dinosaurs but i hope to goodness Saltaire is OK
Coalition like an animal sanctuary? Good try but no evidence that they have any plans to save anyone but their own.
In fact my symbolism continued in the rest of Jon’s piece because justlike the coalition he left the toad to its agony and went and stretched out in the sun contemplating the more affluent life going on elsewhere.
Mark my words when the cuts are finally announced, that toad will seem like the lucky one.
Saltaire , wasps are an important part of the eco system and being parasitic actually prey on many harmful insects , thereby helping to protect out crops .The only problem is that some of the little b..gers sting:)
Fear not, Adrian. The dinosaur gene survived and still hopes to live long enough to see a fair society where old Etonians finally get to polish the silver spoons rather than always eating out of them.
It is quite simple .The meaning of life is 42.I watched many episodes of Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy to discover that.
As for your toad Jon if you had an inch of human sentiment , you would have caught it , put it in a box and taken it to a toad sanctury.I’m sure there is one.
We, humans are a strange race.We can not live together for all sorts of stupid reasons,yet we can rescue seals and birds of prey.Stop building to preserve so called endangered species , yet quite happily cage birds , rear them to be shot,and eat all sorts.
We will only inherit this earth for a fleeting glimpse of time and yet the fact that we are here at all is absolutely amazing. My hobby is family history,and the number of forebears who were the last born of dozens where half died, or one was illegitimate .They survived plagues, wars and anything else that can destroy life.
So 42 is probably the best wxplanation there is
Talking about survival Adrian did you see that bit of news on the BBC website about the extinction of dinosaurs.
Evidence has been collected, apparently through Spike ferns which follow an eco disaster of 2 very definite meteors coming into contact with earth, rather than the one catastrophe, facts reveal tht there may have been meteor storm.
Watch yer eds as you gaze at the night sky, Mine is buried beneath the sand.
Adrain are you insinuating that Jon is Toad of Toad Hall.
IMO – you should have kiled the toad stright off – it has a nervous system – just like u and me . In all probobality it went off and died in agaony – bleeding to death . I dont know why you think size is imporatnt re swatting [ killing ??] animals – also just becasue a spp. is endangered is no reason to protect it – if Nature says it is on way out – so be it . Only spp. that are useful to us humans should be protected – the problem is – knowing which are useful and which are not – but the concentration of ”environmentalists ” on the nice spp eg humpbacked whales , golden eagles – and ”nice” coloured birds etc etc is misguided . They [ hump backed whales ]] are nice to look at but they eat the food we should eat eg mackrel and herrings . Animals we know are on decline are bees – and due to intensive tillage farming – earthworms – these are vital animals to us – not to mention the Billions of animals that exist beneath the soil – many of which are viatl for a healthy soil to produce crops to feed this burgeoning planet .BTW reducing CO2 will result in just more starvation – due 2 lower crop yields .
I sympathise with you.
A few summers ago while digging out the compost bin with a spade, I wounded a slo-worm, one of a pair, that had decided to nest there.
The snake’s midsection bulged horribly from internal haemmoraging as it writhed in pain, so I gently placed it in the long grass hoping it would die quickly.
Fifteen minutes later it was still there. Still alive. Incapable of moving from the spot.
I moved it onto the paving stone, took the spade, then swept the blade cleanly across it’s body to take the head off. I can still picture the gummy, toothless mouth agape.
No scary movie can recreate that trembling feeling of horror and guilt at having destroyed a complex, living creature, particularly one so graceful.
I should have added, at least take comfort that your reaction confirms you as a civilised member of the human race. Not that there was any doubt!
Cheers,
Ben
Jon ,you are OK i found 8 toads under a shed i removed today.Do you wish me to send you one via channel 4:)
Saw a pheasant hit by the car in front of me today. First I saw was a flurry of loose feathers blowing around in the verge as the poor creatures body was burst open by the wheel of the preceeding vehicle.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the neck and head was still moving when I drove past, looking around in what I can only assume was abject terror. Do pheasants experience that sensation…?
I didn’t have the reaction time or the heart to drive over the pheasant again and put it completely out of its misery, but was left thinking for the rest of the day that perhaps I should have done…
Then I read your blog Jon.
It certainly gets one thinking.
“I was wrong” – the three top words in Eng Lang. Please forgive my earlier nastiness.
“It was a toad moving in a very awkward way.” Most bloggers may think this a very ordinary line;but I think it sort-of takes you to Asgaard – Modestico Maximus.
This internet thing – it is all new to all of us, whatever our age, whatever our experience – or lack of.
It is a new world – a world where the atavar may be more honest than the non-atavar. A world of confused realities. A world where the self-is-the-social – where the-personal-is-the-political. As a species, we have never known such a time – such a mixed-birth of consciousness: such a not-this/not-that.
This is all new – and will take time.
Some may call us Citizen-Journalists: are’nt we Amateur 17th Century Pamphleteers? And is this wrong?
Phil in the 60′s some would have called us angry young men and women.Now most call Saltaire and myself “silly old fools” from another age”
When I was 40 the young nurses rigorously and arrogantly implied I was a dinosaur, they ridiculed me blatantly reading out aloud in a very cocky fashion some of the practices which had been and methods used. Now they have thrown out their own ways , use mine ,have very senior posts and harp on about how young they are at 40.
But rather a dinosaur or an old toad, with better qualifications, more experience and less money , than a nasty hypocrite.
So I will leave them to sort through mountains of paperwork deciding whose signature to believe, whose lies fit in with their own philosophy best and therefore who they are going to support and let the underhanded little ba****** weave their web.
Adrian: “silly old fools from another age”. That’s the annoying thing; you/we/I reach an age when we’re ‘from another age’, but arguably we’re young fools from an earlier age.
Or am I reaching?
We try and waft wasps in our household – my sister living in Belgium tought us, ” Sauer, sauer , sauer, I am not a flower” and we teach our children this every summer. I love having ham for lunch outside, when the wasps come and smell it they arrive hungry, spend ages chomping big portions for themselves and then stagger off through the air with their tasty meal, fun to watch and very harmless. Be nice to wasps. My partner John did swat one as it was being aggressive, and he severed it through the waist. The stinging section lay motionless on the desk, while the head and wings section vanished – he can only assume it flew off by itself. Poor thing.