Apples

 

I have no right to speak of this, for I  meter out death to slugs and snails.

I have shouted out aloud that such creatures are not welcome here, and hoped that the grisly piles of their broken brethren under the buzz of bottle green flies would help translate my words, but still they come, and so still I murder with the snip of scissors, the burn of salt, the scald of water or the quick flattening action of a grubby shoe.

I have tried nematodes, organic slug pellets, and long ago industrial slug pellets. And still they come treading over foil and broken eggs shells as if I’ve laid out a welcome carpet for a stately trail of silvery slime.

I want them gone. I want a Pied Piper to call a tune and for them all to follow him, so a pansy flower might bloom and sunflowers no longer stand on short stalks in my garden beheaded.

I would prefer them a painless exodus as killing them leaves a festering ulcer in my soul, and I take no pleasure in it.

So I am hoping that the rapacious mouths of this year’s tiny frogs will seek out my enemies tiniest infants and then feed and gorge .

So, with this partly in mind, I have nurtured my pond’s tadpoles spending many hours watching their antics.

 

The ones that are left in the pond are taking their time to change.

There is a plant with long thin leaves like the many spokes of a bicycle and these slower tadpoles  swim together into its gathering apex. Many of them here then sun themselves as they practice breathing air. Nearby the tiny frogs that are able to crawl out gather preparing for a challenging steep climb out of the pond close to the wall.

Today when I checked on them there were fewer tadpoles in this their favourite spot, and it was only when I glance a second time that I see them. Apples. Small unripe apples bobbing on the water.

There is an apple tree in my neighbour’s garden, but its branches have been hard pruned and so do not stretch over the pond. So these apples haven’t simply fallen in. Someone has picked them. Someone has stood looking over the small wall and has then deliberately dropped them upon the tadpoles as if they were bombs. And then someone enjoyed doing this over and over again.

The neighbours whose parcels I take in and sign for.

But I have no right to speak of this, the bombing of the tadpoles, for I meter out death to slugs and snails.