(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange has a soft spot for what we call pests.
(LANGE) Mother and I have been together more than fifty years now, so I can tell from the tone of her questions, exclamations, or comments just what’s going on. This time it was a shriek of terror.
I knew she was upset with the grit tracked into the front hall during the day, and I knew my promise to vacuum it up in the morning was not a satisfactory response. So I wasn’t surprised when she started up her noisiest vacuum cleaner about ten last evening, just a few yards from my desk.
But all of a sudden she screamed, dropped the vacuum, and ran into her office, still screaming. I hobbled out into the hall to see what was up. "What’s up?" I asked, in my most reassuring tone.
"There’s something alive in the hall! I tried to pick it up, and it moved! Yeeaagh!"
This was getting interesting. I got a flashlight, and went to look.
There was a little brown bat on the floor inside the front door, huddled fearfully and looking up at the flashlight with beady little black eyes. Mother’d thought it was just something tracked in, and was a bit startled when it wriggled between her fingers. I got a piece of cardboard, slipped it beneath him, and picked him up. I carried him outside, said, "Good bye, little buddy," and launched him high into the darkness.
How much luckier he’d been than the bats of my childhood, whom my father hunted through the house with a broom. How much luckier than all the little creatures – ants, termites, mice, moles, red squirrels – peaceful cogs in the wheel of life till we occupied their territory and named them pests.
We’ve skirmished with wild animals for half a century now. We haven’t always won, but winning has often left us feeling mildly guilty. They, after all, have arguably a better right to our territory than we. A raccoon used to bring her kids to visit as we barbecued in the back yard. They lined up in a row at the edge of the woods to watch. After we’d gone to bed, we could hear them growling at each other as they dragged the drip pan toward the swamp. Next day I always retrieved it. They were a major nuisance, but one night, when I heard coon hounds approaching the house, I stood at the foot of their den tree with a stick and a flashlight, holding the hounds at bay till their owner arrived. I suggested to him a different venue, and Mother and I continued to live in cautious friendship with the little masked bandits.
Pests – they’ll be with us as long as we bigger pests keep moving into their habitat. But they’re relatively harmless. They don’t pave over open land, they generate very little trash or carbon dioxide, they don’t complain about us to the cops. And they’ll be here long after we’re gone.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.