Things That Bang

Last year I had written about killing a mole who had been eating my vegetables, roots of my other expensive plants and making horrid little holes all over the garden. I rammed down stones in the holes but mole was an exuberant enthusiastic destroyer. I went psycho and killed him with lethal pesticides. I even put of a picture of a dead mole on my site.

Till date I get nasty wayward emails about my shameful behavior. One even mentioned that I should have called Animal Control and gotten them to remove the pestering pest. Yeah right!! If I called the animal control guys they would have laughed me off- Excuse me, can you take the mole out of my garden?

The snake that co-habituated with us when we came back from the US decided to bid me a firm syonara after we had a run in with each other. The villagers poured in to look for the snake but he had decided to part company. There was no more free loading and the trespasser left without any sort of harassment but the mole was another story.

He enraged me and so was killed with poison. I got hate mail, but hey I am the type who doesn't believe in street dogs either. A menace is a menace and needs to be dealt with - dogs should be killed humanely; moles..well, they along with the rest of their plague carrying relatives do not have my sympathies.

Of course other species of nature are most welcome in my garden like spiders, butterflies, earthworms and of course lady birds. The crow living on the mango tree deterred me from getting a Koi pond. Crows love fish and I'd have to kill it or cut the tree and I am not ready to do either for a bunch of fish.

Killing seems to be a natural part of gardening. Pesticides to kill aphids, boric powder to deter ants who run away with seeds, list goes on.

For a long time I believed I was the only one giving in to her nasty psycho killing streak but on reading the New York Times article - Peter Rabbit Must Die I breathed a sigh of relief I wasn't the only one but one amongst the many.

The article ended with a weak:

There is also the approach offered by Catherine Wachs, a gardener who runs the Right Brain Design advertising company and lives in Larchmont, N.Y.: “I do what the Bible says: Leave the corners of your field unharvested for the poor and strangers among you.”

Thing is they are not human strangers wanting to eat your fruit but pests who destroy the entire crop! And most of us love our tomatoes and cabbages. Think we are crazy? - dig your fingers in dirt, sow some seeds, watch them bloom or watch the vegetables grow and then feel the blow when the devastation happens overnight. If the gardening bug bites you so will the call of the wild come to your aid. Its as simple as that.