THE FARMER’S HELPERS
“By ‘helpers’ I here mean those animals and birds that come to our aid,
though not subject to our care and protection, and make war on the
insects and divers other devourers that would soon get complete control
of our crops if we were left to our own resources for preventing their
excessive multiplication. What could man do against those voracious
hordes that annually propagate their kind at a rate defying
calculation? Would he have the patience, the skill, the keenness of
eyesight necessary for effective warfare upon the smallest of these
marauders when the June-bug, despite its size, mocks at our utmost
efforts to exterminate it? Would he undertake to examine all his
fields, a clod at a time, to inspect his grain, ear by ear, to
scrutinize his fruit trees, one leaf after another? For so prodigious a
task the combined efforts of the whole human race would not suffice.
The devouring hosts would eat us up, my friends, if we had no helpers
to come to our rescue, helpers endowed with a patience that nothing can
weary, an adroitness that baffles all wiles, a vigilance from which
there is no escape. To lie in wait for the enemy, to seek him in his
remotest retreats, to pursue him without pause or rest, and finally to
exterminate him, that is their sole concern, their incessant
preoccupation. They are implacable, pitiless; hunger urges them on,
both for their own sake and in behalf of their families. They live at
the expense of those that live at our expense; they are the enemies of
our enemies.
“As participants in this great work must be named the bat and the
hedge-hog, the owl, the martin, the swallow, and all the smaller birds,
the lizard, the adder, the frog, and the toad. Praise be to God who has
given us as protectors from that glutton, the insect, such birds as the
swallow and the warbler, the robin and the nightingale, the martin and
the starling. And yet these invaluable creatures, guardians of earth’s
bounty, a delight to the eye, a solace to the ear, have their homes
pillaged by the barbarous and stupid robber of birds’ nests. Praise be
to God who for the protection of our daily bread has given us the owl
and the toad, the hedge-hog and the bat, the adder, the lizard and the
mole. Nevertheless these useful creatures that come so valiantly to our
aid are cursed and calumniated, and we stupidly vent upon them our
loathing and hate.
“By what perversity are we, in general, impelled to destroy animals
whose coöperation is so much to our advantage? Nearly all our helpers
are persecuted. Their good will must be indomitable to make them bear
our ill treatment and not forsake our dwellings and fields, never to
return. The bat rids us of a host of enemies, and is nevertheless under
the ban; the mole clears the soil of vermin, and is likewise
proscribed; the hedge-hog wages war on vipers and cut-worms, and it too
is an outlaw; the owl and various other night birds are accomplished
rat-hunters, and they also are in disfavor; the adder, toad, and lizard
feed on the ravagers of our crops, and all the while we hold them in
abhorrence. They are ugly, we say, and without further reason we kill
them. But, blind slayers, the day will come when you will perceive that
you have been sacrificing your own defenders to an irrational
repugnance. You complain of rats, but you nail the owl to your door and
let its body dry in the sun as a hideous trophy; you cry out against
cut-worms, but you crush the mole every time your spade turns one up;
you disembowel the hedge-hog and set your dogs on him just for fun; you
bewail the ravages of moth and worm in your granaries, but if the bat
falls into your clutches it is seldom that you show him any mercy. Your
complaints go up to heaven, but all these willing helpers of yours you
treat as creatures accursed. Blind fools that you are, filled with an
insane desire to kill!
“Insect-eating birds are of immense importance to agriculture. They
divide among themselves the work to be done in field and hedge, meadow
and garden, forest and orchard, and wage unceasing warfare on every
species of vermin, a terrible tribe that would destroy our crops were
not more vigilant guardians than we continually on the watch—guardians
of far greater adroitness, of sharper eyesight, of more lasting
patience in their endless quest, and having nothing else to do. I am
not exaggerating, my little friends; without insect-eating birds famine
would decimate us. Who then, unless he be an idiot with a mania for
destruction, would dare touch the nests of birds that enliven the
country with their plumage and deliver us from the devouring scourge of
insects? But there are, nevertheless, bloodthirsty gamins who, if they
can manage to elude the school-master and play truant, find it a joyous
pastime to climb trees and explore hedges in order to rob birds’ nests
and slaughter the young. These good-for-nothings are under the
surveillance of the rural guard and liable to the utmost rigors of the
law, to the end that our crops may still be protected by the birds and
that our fields and orchards may continue to yield sheaves of grain and
baskets of fruit.
“Let us add a few words on the mode of life of these indispensable
collaborators. The bat feeds exclusively on insects, anything in that
class serving its purpose,—beetles with hard wing-sheaths,
spindle-shanked mosquitoes, graceful butterflies, plump-bellied moths
of all kinds, such as make havoc of our cereals, vineyards, fruit trees
and woolen stuffs, and those that come in the evening, attracted by the
lamplight, and singe their wings over the flame. Who shall say how many
insects are snapped up by the bats in their nightly tour of our
premises? The game is so small, the hunter’s appetite so insatiable!
“Note what takes place on a calm summer evening. Lured abroad by the
mild temperature of the twilight hours, a swarm of insects leave their
retreats and come out to play in the open air, to hunt for food, and to
mate, one with another. It is then that great night-moths fly abruptly
from flower to flower and plunge their long proboscis to the bottom of
the corolla, where they suck up the honey; it is then that the
mosquito, eager for human blood, sings its war-song in our ears and
chooses our tenderest spot for the insertion of its envenomed lancet;
and it is then that the June-bug quits the sheltering leaf, spreads its
resounding wings, and goes booming through the air in quest of its kin.
The gnats dance in joyous swarms which the least puff of wind disperses
like a column of smoke; the moths, their wings powdered with silver
dust and their antennæ displayed plume-fashion, indulge in frolicsome
gambols or go in search of favorable places for laying their eggs; the
little wood-gnawing beetles explore the wrinkled bark of old
tree-trunks; the wheat-moths rise in clouds from the ravaged grain and
take flight for fresh fields; and other night-flying insects flutter
about, alighting on grape-vines and fruit-trees, all busily searching
for food and shelter for their calamitous offspring.
“But suddenly this scene of jollity is intruded upon by a most
unwelcome kill-joy. The bat, with zig-zag course, flits hither and
thither, up and down, back and forth, untiring of wing, appearing and
disappearing, darting its head out this way and that, and each time
catching an insect in flight, which it immediately crushes and gobbles
up, sending it to its doom down a throat that opens wide from ear to
ear. It is famous hunting: gnats, beetles, moths, all are there in
plenty, and every once in a while a little cry of joy announces the
capture of an especially plump victim. As long as the fading twilight
admits of it, the ardent hunter continues in this way his work of
extermination. Stuffed to repletion at last, the bat regains its dark
and quiet retreat; but on the morrow, and every day thereafter
throughout the summer, the hunt will be resumed, always with the same
ardor, always at the cost of insects only. My children, respect the
bat, our helper in destroying the ravagers of our fields.”