THE WICKED FLEA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 670, 9 May 1952, Page 9

THE WICKED FLEA

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 7

HAVE a friend whose first question to me when we meet, if it is not my first question to him, is, "How are they now?" "They" are not my dogs or my sheep or my cows or my rheumatics or my corns, but the fleas that have been tormenting me since the: grass turned to dust ten weeks ago. We can

still laugh about them, but the joke becomes thinner and thinner. To

be put off one’s balance by a flea 1s worse than losing temper and sleep because dogs bark, roosters crow, or beetles tick in the wall. It is the end of philosophy and a relapse into second. childhood. But it is ten years at least since science told us confidently . that flies, fleas, lice and bugs had all been sentenced to death. I remember the photographs with which we used to be fed from the Mediterranean-peasants grinning in a cloud of dust while health squads pumped the magic down their necks and under their loosened waistbands. Now even the flies buzz contemptuously. I have dipped my dogs, moved their kennels, sprayed the surrounding earth, smeared window sashes and sills, and almost satutated cushions, mats, mattresses, and overalls without annihilating either the flies "or the fleas. If [ have peace for 24 hours it is a great victory. But I know that if I work where the dogs used to be (two months ago) or even take too long hooking or unhooking their collars I will pay in half an hour for my clumsiness. David, I seem to remember, asked Saul if he was looking for fleas when he entered the cave in which David ‘robbed him of the tail of his shirt but let him go with his life. I thought of it recently when a farmer in whose car I was riding stopped on an uninhabited stretch of road, grabbed his own knee, and hobbled out behind the car to effect a capture. Fleas have tormented man since he first stood upright, and for a million or more years longer. Though they have never conquered. him they have come near to conquest in the plague inoculations and other fiendish things done to him in the dark, and I can’t help feeling resentment that the worst experience I have ever had of them myself has been in 1952--a decade after they should all have been dead. : * we *

APRIL 9

WAS wrong about the amity of our roosters. What I said was true when I said it, but it is miserably untrue today. I don’t know whether too many liberties were taken, or whether they were taken in too impudent a manner; but Joe’s charity has been used up. He is neither patient now nor kind. One

reason perhaps is that he is moulting — tail-less and bedraggled, while

his young rival struts about in his first glowing feathers and hackles. Another reason could be that Joe is a gentleman and his rival_a lout. Joe eats last, and nearly always gives the best things away. Though he is no laggard in love,

he observes the codes of gallantry. His rival is a snatch-and-grab lad, eating and courting. If Joe is irritable, there is much to make him so. But I hope his impatience will not grow with what it feeds on. He still tolerates a common perch at night, and I find it a little amusing to listen to the crowing contest at daybreak. If that also gets under his skin I shall have to arrange alternate nights in solitary confinement.

APRIL 10

* %* * FORGOT to leave an egg for the hedgehog, and the next day it failed to appear. Today, however, I saw it. again while I was feeding Elsie in the garden, and I could not help noticing that she not only saw it before I did but showed, for her, unusual interest in it. She started slightly when it first

appeared, drawing my attention to it, and then followed it with her eyes

till it disappeared before she resumed her grazing. I don’t think she had any anxiety, or any hostility, but she gave it more attention than she would have given to a rabbit or a cat, and the reason perhaps was that she has not often seen a hedgehog by day. -- — —

I was interested in the hedgehog’s return for another reason than that provided by Elsie; and the eggs. I had just read a bulletin (The Impact of Man Upon Nature in New Zealand) written by Robert Cushman Murphy and reprinted from the Proceedings of the -_--- ~

American Philosophical Society. Dr. Murphy had pointed out that some districts in New Zealand pay a_ bounty of a shilling a head on harrier hawks and also on European hedgehogs, and then added this afresting sentence: "And one of the best wordless * comments upon the quaintness of human behaviour is offered by the not infrequent -sight of a harrier eating a hedgehog on the ground in a roadside paddock!" I am glad Dr. Murphy said paddock and not field, but to round the comment off he should have added that the hedgehog had probably been killed on ‘the road by an American motor-car. I have never seen a hawk carry off a live hedgehog, or a_ fullgrown dead one, but it could, I think, carry a small one high enough

into the air to kill it by dropping it. That would, however, he hard work, and since cars at once kill and crush burst the carcase open, it is easier fo be a scavenger than a hunter, (To be continued) -- -=