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Carnage
You who claim a diet composed solely of vegetables and herbs is free of cruelty: you have no dirt beneath your nails. I cannot count the snails I have killed in my life, cannot begin to estimate the aphids’ deaths for which I am responsible. Somehow those deaths don’t bother me. They are competition. It is something akin to self-defense. True I cannot say, in facing down a snail, that it is her or me. Each individual snail eats only a tiny portion of what I want. Were there three snails in my garden, I would kill none of them. But there are thousands and so I must try to kill them all, either humanely with a hard overhand into the cinder-block wall, or slowly, cruel and lingering, with iron phosphate. They eat it and starve to death over days. Aphids I soap down to smother them, or murder a quick hundred with a thumbnail. Were I hungrier I would eat them, full of sugar as they are. The pests’ deaths do not vex me. I try to limit them, but they do not trouble my conscience, or if they do I am at least resigned to it.
It is the accidental deaths that trouble me these days, the sidelong murders. The sleek mouse impaled on the fork tine, the earthworm beheaded with a stroke of my trowel, they bother me mightily these days. I cannot sink shovel into soil without wincing. I have built this soil up from near nothing, and it is crowded. Earthworms and grubs, gophers, salamanders delve it. Lizards, if you count the thick pile of oak leaves along the fence as soil. I fully expect to find a garter snake in the oregano one of these days.
Perhaps I’m just skittish. One I love is in that soil now, and I wince harder when the shovel sinks near where he lies. He is down farther than a spade’s depth, and my flinching merely nerves. But this worm may once have been the eyes that searched mine so hard that last day. That grub may have been born within his heart. Were the soil more yielding I would plant trees by coaxing up holes with gentle gloved hands. I would beckon and see the sod lift itself so that I might plant garlic in its stead. But the ground is harder than that, and my charms lacking. I slice the earth with metal. I rack up a body count.
Next to the bed, the Venus flytrap stretches open its hand again. Last Sunday I planted lavender, a one-gallon Lavandula stoechas, and on my first stroke with the shovel I sliced a red worm clean in two. The tail end shrank back into the soil. I picked up the flailing head, took it inside to the flytrap, placed it on a new-opened leaf, which closed tight around the worm. Little is now left of that flesh: a pale smear of dust upon the leaf.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
This is a beautiful piece of writing. I feel the same way about the life in my gardens. I apologize to the worms when I injure them from digging, the spiders when I accidentally destroy their webs, the birds when I startle them.
I don’t have qualms about killing the aphids, the snails and slugs, the weevils. It’s not likely I could get them all, so I ‘m not worried about that.
When the time comes, my cat will be buried somewhere in these gardens. I have a place in mind which is away from the beds, away from foot traffic, unlikely to be disturbed for decades. Another emotional connection for me with the earth.
By: By Xris (Flatbush Gardener) on 2007 03 23
Lovely.
I too have good friends buried in my garden. Another will join them all too soon.
And I too wince whenever I work nearby.
By: By Dale Austin on 2007 03 23
“Gardening is savage. This, of course, is part of the catharsis it offers.” - Sara
Yes, let’s not even get started on weeding ...
By: By Xris (Flatbush Gardener) on 2007 03 23
Snakes. I once caught a garter snake with a hoe. It was agony. I still say sorry to the snake we called Speranza any time I see ANY snake. oy.
A new trick for me, Chris, to avoid the metal, is to soak papers, layer grass/manure/leaves on top, leave it so the worms can do all the work. Just plant into the top of it. At this point there would just be too much to dig otherwise.
By: By Pica on 2007 03 23
One of the odd tragedies of modern religion is how it’s shut us off from understanding the life/death cycle of energy on earth. Out of a misguided attempt to “preserve” the bodies of the dead, we pickle them and then lay them in the earth, unable to decompose and contribute to the soil. I don’t believe in an afterworld, but death would frighten me a little less if I knew that eventually I’d be coming up into the world as plant life, smelling fresh and sustaining the living as food.
By: By Amanda Marcotte on 2007 03 23
Beautiful piece, Chris. I especially like the way you’ve presented the troubling qualities of unintended deaths. I’m not fond of killing things, but I try to be quick and to not do it without a clear reason (i.e. ant scouts in the kitchen will bring more if not dealt with quickly, and tossing them outdoors is not actually kind to them).
But, yes, what troubles me is deaths that happen when there was no good reason for them - not because of age, or to acquire or protect food, or because one was defending oneself - but just out of carelessness and indifference. Roadkill is horrible, not so much because an animal died, but because it served no purpose - the car wasn’t threatened, or hungry, and the driver probably didn’t even notice or care. Each life matters, even if—or especially if—we choose to end it.
That’s why I have less difficulty respecting hunters and fishermen and farmers than wooly-headed vegangelists who’ve never shoveled a live cow’s poop in their life. The impulse is good - but you need to move beyond that to think about the reality, not just the disney version.
/off soapbox
By: By Rana on 2007 03 23
Beautiful, Chris. Simply heartfelt and stunning. Would that we all introspectively and carefully consider what too many see as trivial…as collateral damage.
By: By jason on 2007 03 23
It’s impossible to live without doing some harm.
Bees and spiders I spare. Silverfish I do not. (I only save spiders now because an entomologist, whose specialty is spiders, infected me with her passion for them.)
By: By Lesley on 2007 03 23
Just to add to spyder’s thoughts:
what do you think of this branch of science?
http://www.plantneurobiology.org/
By: By Yubi on 2007 03 23
My sister told me to dunk the little creatures (snails) in salt water, for an instant painless -ulp- death.
But none of them ever came back to tell me that
it was really so.
By: By jeanie on 2007 03 24
Ah, but earthworms have five hearts!
I know what you mean…I’ve thought on this, on Gandhi’s aheemsa (hope that’s spelled right), the harmlessness, to avoid even stepping on ants. I, too, wonder on this. I feel weight from killing a tiny ant, I do.
But even our bodies house innumerable deaths of organisms. I see it all as one. Deaths and lives all around, intertwining, not so compartmentalized as Western thought offers. Like cycles, seasons, showers filling ponds into oceans evaporating into rain…taking life is not a crime…it is the thoughtless, irreverent, disrespectful, unacknowledged, or selfish taking of life that is the crime. To my mind. Because the selfishness, shortsightedness and lack of reverence for life being taken closes down the cycle, the holistic rhythm.
Which is why some say Grace. It is to respect the life they need, that which they consume. To acknowledge the debt and the gift.
Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life…
—Tool
Beautiful piece.
By: By Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez on 2007 03 24
Nez, I’ve seen that spelled “ahimsa” in Gandhi’s writing, but who knows. It’s one of those “transliterated from another orthographical system” kinda dealios and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it pronounced by a native speaker, so I can’t say which spelling is closer to that vowel sound.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 03 24
ah, you remind me with your comment that it is “ahimsa.” the “heem” is my mental note on pronunciation. those hands were supposed to stay in the car. :)
By: By Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez on 2007 03 25
You keep astounding me.
It’s hard to gets words other than yes.
By: By little light on 2007 03 25
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