Of beanstalks and rodents

April 22, 2016

Chennai, India

I think they were moles or shrew. But they could be field rats or any other rodent. I don't really know how to tell one from the other. But they were able to dig up most of my legumes and kills them. It was an uphill battle to keep my black eyed peas alive for a month and a half. But we managed, plants and I. Like the first child of a family, these are the most hardy and the closest to my heart.

I had a vague idea that beans had stalks but I had forgotten I guess. So when the beans started shooting out feelers for twining and climbing, I was at a loss. It was a good few weeks until I realized I should try to support these with sticks. And a month until I got over my procrastinating to actually doing it.

When I reached the entangled mass to support the ten or so survivors with sticks, I was a little taken aback. My little babies had inter-twined, supporting each other to reach up to the new heights. Black eyed pea to black eyed pea. 

Their silent stern look said in a quiet firm way to me "wood would be good, but we can do without it."

*** 

Every night I would go to sleep with my ears pinned at the garden, half expecting to hear them scurrying and doing their evil deeds. I would wake up and go out as soon as I could, 4 am - 4:30 am, with a head lamp on my head, inspecting my, now a 30 feet by 20 feet garden. 

They would not do anything to any other plants: flowers, squashes, other things I was growing, but they would uproot beans and legumes, eat their roots and throw the shoots around. A scene of massacre.

It is not difficult to kill rodents. There are so many easy and inexpensive ways to do it. But I had done it one in the past and regretted it -

It had been rainy for a few day in Banaras ten years ago, the whole school ground was flooded. We were sitting in the library and reading children's books. I saw what I thought was a rat scurry to the reading room. I followed it and tried to shoo it away. It was moving very slowly. Much too slow for a rat, but I did not think about it. Some of my colleagues were scared of it, so I took a stick or broom or something, and killed it, and did not think about it twice.

I was living in a room in the school guesthouse which was very close-by. The next morning, very early, I heard some squeaking sounds outside the library. I went there to investigate and found a pink small rodent baby. I looked around for a squirrel nest, but I did not find any. Slowly it dawned on me that it was the orphaned baby of the rodent I had killed last night. Deep guild took over me, and I decided to take care of the baby. 

As the days went by the baby developed teeth that distinctly set it apart to look like its parent and a quick search on google showed me that I was a father to a shrew baby. 

My baby was pretty blind, but she started recognizing my voice. I would call it when I come around with milk on cotton sponge. If anyone else opened the box the baby would come forward to the light but if the voice was not mine she would recoil to the back in fear. 

One day I saw that the baby had eaten some bugs and I saw the legs and other appendages lying around. I felt that I was not doing well as a father. Moved I looked around the campus for inspiration and found some earthworms. When I left for dinner, she had started chewing on the live juice worm shaking it with every bite. 

After a leisurely dinner I came back to see that the baby was asleep, which was pretty normal. But when she did not squeak the next morning I was worried. I opened her box to find to an awful smell. She was gone. Earth was poring from her nose. It seems she chocked on the earth inside the worm.

The memories of the shrew baby have haunted me since. I always feel bad about it. 

One morning I woke up to check on the plants and I saw that they had chewed up all my squashes and uprooted them. They had even dug up some of my flower plants! Let alone destroyed all my mung beans I had sprouted. 

That was it. I was furious. In my mind, they had crossed a line - uprooting to eat is fine, but there was no calling for this kind of mindless uprooting of my flowers and other plants. 

After working myself up, I acted on my anger and bought some rat poison. The poison instructions said that it would kill the rats 4-5 days after it was consumer. I put the poison out in the garden at night and found it gone in an hour or so. 

The next morning there was much of the same kind of massacre of beans and squashes. But I also found that there was some digging under a piece of rock. I was pretty surprised to see this. I moved the rock to investigate and found some juicy worms under it. I looked at the roots of the flowers the rodents had uprooted. Worms as well.

A few days later my garden was filled with a familiar, guilty smell, that lingered for a long time.