|
|||||||||||||||||||
Wednesday, July 16, 2008Owie
In between editing takes, we took a day yesterday to remodel the garden. And I am a bundle of aches.
Frog-rescuing has been a feature. We have a small pond in our still-quite-small garden, and as it was getting stagnant and Mika kept leaping into it (anyone who's ever had to wash off a dripping, stinky cat will recognise the domestic upheaval this creates), plus taking up loads of space and being a drowning hazard for any future children we plan to have, we decided it was time to get rid of it. Little did we realise until we'd drained it that this meant we were dispossessing more than half a dozen fully-grown frogs. I hadn't seen any tadpoles this year, so I assumed they'd all gone off to pastures new, but to my deep dismay, this turned out not to be the case. When the water level got down low enough, there they were, handsome green animals all hunching in the remaining water and looking at us accusingly. Alas, the pond still had to go - among other things, it occurred to us that the main reason Mika kept jumping in the pond was probably to catch and kill them; we'd already found some corpses, so it was hardly a safe garden for them - but I love frogs and my conscience was twinging worse than my lower back. Luckily we live near a park with several ponds. Out came my biggest cooking pot; I chased the frogs up one end of the pond with a spade, Gareth caught and potted them, and we hobbled down the road to the park, little heads butting against the lid like popcorn. Finally we reached the park, identified the less heron-friendly pond, and tipped out the frogs. They swam off across the water, kicking their legs with graceful haste, hopefully to a new, cat-free life. Right now I'm feeling like the villain of some children's novel - Richard Adams is yelling in my head - but at least we moved them to a bigger, cleaner pond. Sorry, froggies. Here's a question: does reading anthropomorphic books as a kid make you more likely to become an environmentalist, or at least a half-assed one who wanders around your local park with a cooking implement? Do loggers just read books about Roman commanders and football stars instead? Or what?
Comments:
Oh, I do love "little heads butting against the lid like popcorn." Such a perfect snippet of description!
Cx
Farthing Wood certainly did that to me. And a good half of the other books I read growing up.
Mind, I'm also a half-arsed environmentalist who rescues mice from cats and ends up sending them into a state of paralytic shock. Congratulations on your prenuptials by the way. [I have a habit of saying the wrong thing, and think I just did there, but I'm sure you understand the sentiment]
Hm. So animal-fearin' / economically-reliant-on-animal older cultures had gods that were part animal. The British who have turned their forested natural landscape into an artificial person-scape for so many hundred years that it's practically natural now are in love with animals (the RSPCA equivalents in N. Amer don't have nearly the same public traction, and there aren't whole TV shows about featuring animals the same way), and so wrote a ton of anthropomorphic literature where the animals get sympathetic toad halls and such...
While the americans, for whom everything is a mega project, anthropomorphise anything - machines, rugs, aliens, the whole 9 yards.
They swam off across the water, kicking their legs with graceful haste, hopefully to a new, cat-free life.
Post a Comment
You know the old frog saying: "Out of the cat-pond; into the heron-pond!" Gareth caught and potted them What sort of ferterlizer did he use? Sorry -- I guess I'm just in a weird mood tonight. << Home ArchivesJuly 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 |
|||||||||||||||||||