A Light Extinguished

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 16

A Light Extinguished

by

SUNDOWNER

MARCH 29

ETWEEN Burnham and Ashburton last week I saw a cow rocking and rolling. I don’t know whether the rain had got under her skin or the sight of a ploughed paddock had run away with her senses, but she was going down on one knee and then on the other, at each descent burying a horn in the ground, groaning, and lashing her tail. It

was such a ridiculous performance that I stopped my car to

watch, but all I could think after five mad minutes was that she had come from a byre equipped with radio, I have not yet seen a rock and roll performance by sub-humans, but in the antics of that brindle cow, the energy wasted, and the nuisance deliberately created -in the nicely turned furrows there wag soon a dry wallow and packed stamping ground-I was sure I had a perfect illustration, grunts and all, of an adolescent mystery on TV. I don’t sing to my cows as I milk them, or whistle, or croon. If I could give them TV it would be love’s labour lost, since they half close their eyes when the milk begins to flow and do not fully open them again till I get up. But there must be precocious cows as there are precocious boys and girls, and I think that cow had soft music while the pulsators worked and wanted something faster and more furious. Either that, or she was full of ragwort and tutu and was not sure whether to lie down and die peacefully or let the earth know first that she was coming.

"MARCH 30

bd cod % NEVER knew A. R. D. Fairburn well enough to call him by his Christian name. I have none of his books, nor can I remember anything he wrote clearly enough to bring him to life again in print. But I had many indirect contacts with him — letters, | telephone conversations, and the brief

fellowship an_- arresting article establishes until it is displaced by

something else-and the news of his death still seems unreal. Even though the information has now reached me that death was not a surprise to him, it is bewildering to me, and deeply

distressing. Some of us seem to be created to die as clearly as some seem created to live. We are never fully alive, or gladly awake. A.R.D.F. was exuberantly alive every day. The hours were too short for him, the excitements too continuous. Yet if he could live again I am _ sure he would spend himself a second time as recklessly and as generously as he did the first time, interesting himself only in the process and very little in the result. Nor am I one of those who think such a_ performance disappointing. In relation to his sparkling ability-the word should be abilities-he may seem to have done very little that his contemp-

oraries will remember in 10 or 15 years, He was casual in creation, careless, except now and again, in comment. and criticism, Because he took life lightly and allowed himself few moments of solemnity he gave the impression that there was more above the surface than below it. He wrote, spoke, and lived moment by moment rather than day by day or year by year. It is possible that he really was rich soil for only a few inches down, But that would still leave him where he has been for many years -looking down on most of us with a kind but wicked smile, making jokes about us and ridiculing us, and now and again destroying some pretender with a savage thrust. I can’t help regarding his death as an _ unrelieved calamity: a light extinguished on an already dim street, with nothing in sight to replace it. It will be candles and matches for a long time now where there used to be light from a dynamo,

MARCH 31

* % % DON’T want to boast, or swagger, or trail my coat, or thumb my nose. I feel as humble as my dog looks when he is creeping back to my feet after I have ordered him out of licking distance. I know that lofty looks will be humbled and haughtiness bowed down. But I am bold enough to think, and

childish enough to say, that the most attentive listener this morning

to Arnold Wall’s symposium on the rabbit was sitting within a hundred miles of my own chair. I have lived with rabbits as long as I have lived with my own hair and my own teeth; and a little longer. I have murdered them, pardoned them, petted them, tortured them, committed a thousand unpardonable sins for and against them. But tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, and I am not sure yet whose day it will be. It will certainly be ours if through selfishness or sentimentality we make it any other day than that from which to date the last rabbit, Meanwhile, I am not happy about it. Though it is easier to prove the

new policy than to test the Asses’ Bridge, it is mot easy to coerce the asses, whose names are yours and mine, I have yet to meet the farmer who pays. rates or taxes cheerfully. Because it may cost as much to kill one rabbit as to kill ten, as much to kill ten as to kill a hundred or a thousand, that last tabbit has more than a 50-50 chance of survival. Coming to terms with him is coming to terms with the DevilLord Salisbury would use another name -but the earth’s great compromiser is man. Compromising with the Devil is not so dangerous as compromising with ourselves, and we do both every day. I have seven rabbits whose haunts I know, and twenty-seven, I have little doubt, laughing at me behind the others. How much do I spend annually in the war against them? Five: shillings and six-pence-the price of one box of carttidges. Since my scoring rate is about one hit in four shots. I am clearly not keeping pace with their multiplication. * * *

APRIL 4

AM delighted to know that a campaign has been started to make Canterbury a better world for wild ducks. I should like to be able to say a safer world, but that might be going too far. The promoters of the campaign, the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society, say merely that their aim is

to help both the sportsman and the farmer, but although I can hardly

claim to be one or the other, I am with them all the way till the guns go off. Even then I will not be against them. I will just hope that the shots will all miss. My version of the nursery rhyme would be something like this: There was a little man, and he had a little gun, And his bullets they were made of lead. So he went to a brook, and he fired at a duck, And this is what the grey duck said: Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Go and bag your head, However, since I have never shot a duck or eaten one, I will not obstruct those who look forward to doing both. Though I am for live ducks only, I realise that dead ducks may increase the number of those’ still on the wing. Sportsmen want live ducks. I want live ducks. If everybody works for live ducks both sides may get more of them, as farmers and lions both benefit from more ‘lambs. It is a fact, too, that the biggest threat to ducks is not the gun but the drag-line and the drain plough. Canterbury is becoming drier. Every country gets drier as ponds are emptied and swamps drained-as they must be where they are impeding production. But water in the wrong place can be moved to the right place, and it is the plan of the Acclimatisation Society to persuade farmers who can do it to create ponds in which ducks and other water birds can feed and dabble in the shelter of trees and shrubs. That is a prospect that fills me with happy thoughts and hopes, whatever the purpose behind it may be. But it fills me with sadness, too, since there is not, on my own little holding, one corner in which a pond or dam could safely be made. (To be continued)