It's funny when the thoughts strike though. Yesterday, R was all in indignation. A particularly devious mouse, it appeared, has been sneaking into the greenhouse and nicking the seeds out of his newly planted pots without leaving any trace of the crime. This last point, I think, is what gets R's gander most. He can understand that our wildliving friends will garden alongside us, but he doesn't like to be tricked by what is vermin. Poor mouse is for it now. The greenhouse is awash with lurking traps and hidden poison. I can't bring myself to go in, as to be confronted by the squirming remains of an ex-mouse doesn't strike me as very Eastery and, in consequence, the poor seedlings are now victims of both trickery and drought.
There is a thought-link from all this however. Slightly a tenuous one but still a link of sorts. Because it brought me back to Mao's Sparrow Cull. I am always intrigued by the bizarrer parts of Mao's grip on poor China, and I do wonder whether his campaign against the four pests was perhaps the Crown Stealer of them all. I once met an elderly gentleman on a train in Hunan who once told me he had taken part in the Great Sparrow Cull and had been smacked for not killing enough. He even demonstrated the smack for me - a great ringing clap across his cheek. I was fairly stunned and so we drank beer together. Anyway, in brief: Mao decided early on in the Great Leap Forward that there were four pests in China which were being especially naughty; rats, flies, sparrows and mozzies. Indeed, the sparrows in particular were showing real capitalist roader instincts by sitting around all day eating the workers' crops. So, the whole country was sent out to Kill the Sparrows, which they did with guns, catapults and generally the banging of saucepans under trees until the poor things crashed down in exhaustion. People then paraded their little feathery corpses to the town hall and were publically praised for a good killing (Good Communist!) and denounced for a poor show (Possible Capitalist or Imperialist Bastard!) The upshot of which was, of course, that the locusts sat back and rubbed their little locust feet with glee before Feasting Unpecked with pesty relish on all the crops; at which point everyone said "Whoops" and began to starve. Except Mao, natch.
And, what do you know, of COURSE footage of this is on youtube!
Sure, it's not funny, not in any sense, but it is mesmerising and definitely worth seeing. Maybe I'll show it in the garden too. Bit of a warning. That sort of thing...
