Crushing Snail Shells

I tried to help a baby bird in the back garden the other day. It must have fallen from the nest or something because it could hardly fly, kinda skimming across the lawn with me two dogs in close pursuit, gnashing and pawing at it. It's parents were perched in two trees south and north of the garden chirping like mad at it so I got the dogs inside the house and then I grabbed it and put it on a branch and it fell of again but managed to fly into the conifers. Over the next couple of days there emerged a little splattering of bird poo on the dirt border underneath and conifers and I saw mum and dad bird flying in occasionally, chirping like bonkers. Then on Friday I found the baby lying dead on the dirt border, next to it's poo. I picked it up and it hung limp in my hand and I looked into it's eyes. Funny how I felt a rush of guilt when knowing full well that I did all I could. I felt even worse for placing it in a carrier bag and putting it in the wheelie bin. I knew that if I buried it then either a neighbourhood cat or one of my dogs would dig it up and chew on it. I miss that constant chirping.

I like saving snails from those who intentionally or unintentionally crush them. I may have stepped on hundreds of ants, but I never stepped on any snail. Thanks.

I think that once you interfere you somehow take on a responsibility... I remember a kind of Buddhist parable where a sage sacrificed himself to a hungry female tiger so she could feed her starving cubs - at least he would never worry about whether or not he did the right thing.

Bet you never tread on any Beatles, Billy ;o)

I bit ago I mentioned saving a female duck from some 'Fundamentalist' male Mallards... a few days later I'm down by the lake again and a female duck comes running toward me and I think it must be the one I saved coming to say thanks. Then I notice that she is being closely followed by two or three male 'Fundamentalists' drakes - almost livid with indignation shaking their tails and shaking their heads like fury. I quickly realise that she has not come to thank me but merely to complain that she is being hassled. I decide to keep out of it since they are not actually all piling on her and pecking her as they were before. She's having none of this and follows me around the side of the lake nagging at me (duck-pecking I suppose you would call it) while the 'Fundamentalists' are following her doing their 'O Jesabel' routine. I've started going to the lake in disguise!

We are all going to be worm food, so any 'sage' that thows himself to the lions or tigers or other felidae is just trying with 'feline grace' to rectify his or her dramatically stupid karma or relationship with the God he or she believes in. In fact it is such 'sages' that gave sages a bad name. Kids don't try this at home or when you go to the zoo. Thanks.

It is such sages, that coupled up with certain onions, were often used for stuffing.

I don't get what you mean JMK, honestly. I hope that the meaning of 'coupling up with certain onions' is not a personal libellous attack and that you do not wish to drive me away from the forums with such unintelligible metaphoric words. In any case this is the last time I address you.

Sage and onion is a traditional stuffing for chickens...

Pax O

YEAH ITS HORRIBLE THAT WE KILL SNAILS BY ACCIDENT AND IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME THOUGH BECAUSE WHEN I WAS OUT IN MY GARDEN GETTING MY WASHING IT STARTED TO RAIN PRETTY HEAVY AT THE TIME SO WE WERE WEARING WELLIES AND MY 6 YEAR OLD NIECE WAS IN THE GARDEN AND STEPPED ON ONE AND NOW SHE HAS A FEAR OF SNAILS.

Er, the allcaps makes it look like you're yelling at the top of your lungs about snails.

I remember holidaying in Wales many times. Coming out of the cottage at night for a pee in darkness, and during the time span when frogs would do that travelling thing that they do, there were many times when I would step on a frog. Squidge! Oh, and at my mother's place in Oxford, slugs have a secret way of getting into her kitchen at night. Woe is me that walks into the kitchen at night without putting the light on. Squidge!

requiem mass...doesn't that occur following a critical mass?

Strange day today: the ducks are looking down their beaks at the food they are usually demanding but yet have enough energy to fratch and fight with each other - so I reckon it's a lazy Sunday with a bad tempered streak. I was thinking that I don't mind snails (especially if they have colourful shells) but I hate the homeless little buggers that even the birds won't eat - now they have other alternatives. Slugs are one of the few things on God's Earth that I can see neither, rhyme nor reason for - well, actually i can think of the odd rhyme but you know what I mean... [%sig%]

There were loads of slugs in my last house. They came out at night and then in the morning the kitchen would be glistening with dry trails. I'd have to scrub it like mad until I could stomach breakfast or a brew. Funny but I never bother killing them off. I used to keep dog meal in the shed and it became infested with mice. I killed them off and then avoided the shed afterwards. Even on the day I moved I said a last goodbye to one of the mice which had snuffed it on a shelf. It just sat there for about a year staring out glumly at me.

lol

<> How did you 'kill them off'... did you poison them with embalming fluid?

>It's about time humans learned to leave Nature well enough alone. We screw it up both ways: when we deliberately dick with it, and when we deliberately don't< A.G. That is one hell of a contradiction. You know as well as I do, we have no chose but to dick with nature.

I saw a frog on the patio the other night and I was just about to go and 'save' it as I see my duty everytime I see a creature away from it's natural habitat or in some kinda trouble and then I thought, no, I'll let nature decide it's fate and I was happy that I learned some lessons. And then tonight I saw a blue bottle in trouble with a spider and I thought oh bugger it, I got a stick and a bit of prodding and flickin later the fly was free and the spider was scarpering away. I picked the fly up with my little twig and I placed it on top of the wheelie bin to have a breather and compose itself. I've just been out there now (4 hours later) and it's still there on the wheelie bin. I think it's dead. So that's a lesson in itself. The fly would have died anyway so I should have left it for the spider to make a meal off. That way both were still doing the 'dance' and all would have been well. Now there's a starving spider out there cursing me, a fly who died for absolutely no reason and a frog thanking it's lucky stars that I stayed the fuck away.

Well, yeah, what I meant was that we are always trying to change the way Nature has made things instead of letting it flow in its own cycles. We change waterways (like in Fenland, a good example): then the water recedes and houses sink as the land dries up. Or we dam rivers up, then a 100-year flood comes, bursts the banks we've made, and washes everything away. The Mississippi River floodplain is a case in point. Then we decide to go the other way, from hypermanaging Nature to undermanaging (like forests in the Southwest US, which thrive on annual forest fires). We stopped the forest fires because we didn't want the forests to burn, but they're fire-based ecosystems. When the underbrush builds up, the forests become a tinderbox. Then we try to do 'managed burns', which, in the wrong conditions, go out of control, and we wind up burning the whole frickin forest down with the towns in 'em included. If we'd just figure that, actually, Mother Nature DOES know best, and live in harmony with her, we wouldn't have half the problems we do now. But don't get me started.

Do you eat meat? If so you're resposnisble for suffering on a scale well beyond your accidental snail squashing moment. I always feel guilty about squashing a spider (scared shitless of the little buggers) yet seem able to turn a blind eye when it comes to the serious amount of death and destruction my simple desire for a burger entails - both to the animals concerned and the impact of meat farming in the third world. My advice - best not beat yourself up about it and watch something funny on the telly, while enjoying something meaty that someone else has killed. [%sig%]

Yeah, but most of us would probably starve to death in the first few years... Once you've started messin' you're stuck with it. I'm sure it would take several decades with everybody working flat out to get anywhere near to living in harmony with nature - that's assuming that we would ever want to. When the oil runs out maybe things will change... [%sig%]

OK ag. Ill not get you started. *Smiles*

Oh go John get her started.

If most of starved to death, that would solve quite a few of the problems connected with overpopulation and overconsumption of resources, now, wouldn't it? I assure you I wouldn't starve to death. Food aversion is not a problem, and I know how to scrounge, forage, cultivate, and hunt. That just leaves the rest of you supermarket shoppers...;-)

Didn't any of you used to watch 'Bush Tucker Man'? He rocks!

I reckon I'd manage to scrape by fishing and eating seagulls but I wouldn't fancy it. Of course you might find that most of your arrows get used up fighting off the peope who want to eat you, Ag... ;o)

A few months of bush tucker and there wouldn't be much meat left on this small body, Smiley. Not worth chasing through the woods for, truly. ;-)

jesus fucking christ

Never heard of it Ag. Anyway. Your wrong about interfering with nature, Ag. But I'm to tired to go in to it tonight. *Winks at Flashy*

I sometime think you have a one track mind, Liana :o)

Aw Liana, ya gotta love it, man.

Can someone put bromide in smikey's tea

You got me chem set Flashy.

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 12, 2004 bromide \BROH-myd\, noun: 1. A compound of bromine and another element or a positive organic radical. 2. A dose of potassium bromide taken as a sedative. 3. A dull person with conventional thoughts. 4. A commonplace or conventional saying. "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em." The words are in fact already a bromide when the pompous Malvolio finds and reads them. --Marjorie Garber, Symptoms of Culture He cannot resist the occasional bromide: "Ninety percent of diplomacy is a question of who blinks first." --Gary J. Bass, "The Negotiator," New York Times, July 11, 1999 The next president could live up to that old political bromide "Let's run the government like a business" by staffing his cabinet with some leading figures from the new world of business. --Daniel H. Pink, "Fast.Gov," Fast Company, October 2000

I blame Milla Jojovitch - the Fifth Element in scimpy bandages (chnl 4).

Milla is a Sagittarius, Smiley. Wouldn't work. Even with bandages.

Oh, that's alright, Ag, I was planning on dispensing with the bandages ;o)

You must have looked at the vegetable link, Smiley. The monk has tossed his frock. So to speak.

God. How I heated that film. *Groans*

You don't watch films with Milla in them to watch the FILM, John. Duh! That's like me watching 'Troy' to watch Brad Pitt's ACTING. Brad and I have the same birthday. *smack smack smack*

I checked the link but it required a download so I didn't bother. I don't eat many vegies nowadays ;o)

If the Requiem Mass is equal to or Greater than the Critical Mass then a chain reaction (neutron Propegation) occurs.

*Kinky*

It's about time humans learned to leave Nature well enough alone. We screw it up both ways: when we deliberately dick with it, and when we deliberately don't.

Yes, John, I've heard others say the film got them heated.

Definitely worth the download, Smiley. Definitely. Whetted my interest in dripping, ah, vegetables, a thousandfold. They're so healthy.

Can someone put Bromide in AG's tea....or something.

"Methyl bromide is a highly effective fumigant used to control insects, nematodes, weeds, and pathogens in more than 100 crops, in forest and ornamental nurseries, and in wood products. Its primary uses are for soil fumigation, postharvest protection, and quarantine treatments." - US Department of Agriculture. Geddit? Ag riculture. *snort snert skknnnxxxx*