Slugs Are For The Birds

by Theodore Dalrymple (September 2013)

Among the many publishers who have failed to make a fortune either for themselves or for me by publishing my books is one who is a keen birdwatcher. I admire him for it because it seems (or rather once seemed) to me that birdwatching, or birding as I believe birdwatchers, or birders, now prefer to be known, is a peaceful and disinterestedly contemplative activity of the kind that I am too impatient to pursue but wished that I was not.

Are birders a little like my plane spotter? Mildly interested in the question, I happened on a book in a charity shop (thrift store) titled Birders: Tales of a Tribe by a distinguished ornithologist and author called Mark Cocker. In truth I bought the book because it cost next to nothing, and I immediately started to read it. It was fascinating, and it somewhat overturned my beliefs about birders.

of those beautiful but stupid birds that blunder into our car windscreens.

I would once have agreed with that our pheasants are stupid, but I can no longer agree that they. Or at any rate all of them, are.

I learnt how clever pheasants can be by watching them from the windows of a large country house in which some friends of mine live. It is in a rural area where one of the main economic activities is raising pheasants for businessmen, who pay an exorbitant fee for the privilege, to shoot.

A small group of pheasants would come on to the lawn that stretched away from the house, led by an absurd male who was proud and pompous as only (among humans) the head of an ancient institution can be. He was cock of the walk, but how small was the walk of which he was cock! He preceded his little following by a few yards, and woe betide any of them who forgot their place and did not keep those few yards distant. Then he would turn and fly at them with righteous indignation, whereupon, without fail, they would retreat. Order having been restored among the revolting peasants, he would then resume his stately progress across the lawn.

But what has this to do with intelligence, you might ask, rather than with stupidity? Nothing, I reply: I am about to come to the intelligence of pheasants.

There was another little group of pheasants, including a one-eyed female, who came right up to the house. The male of this group (he was a bigamist) somehow discovered that if he pecked sharply and rhythmically on the window the humans inside would give him and his tiny harem food. What is interesting about this is that he devised the strategy for himself: no one, as far as I knew, had taught or encouraged him to do this. He seemed to have thought of it himself. It was as if he had used his imagination and had, to use a popular phrase among psychologists these days, a theory of mind, in particular of the human mind.

Another amusing manifestation of pheasant intelligence was the conduct of this particular pheasant if food was not immediately forthcoming. He would then, as if in outrage or indignation, peck at the window faster, louder, more aggressively, furiously in fact, until his demand was met. And I should add that he pecked at the window only if he could see humans present in the room inside. It was altogether a most impressive performance.

It is on these grounds that I take slight issue with the characterisation by the ornithological author of the British pheasant as stupid. The bird has hidden abilities or potential which it is the duty of every gamekeeper to suppress, in case the birds learn to evade their businessmen-executioners, just as it is the effect, and possibly the purpose, of modern educational methods in British state schools to ensure that pupils, especially from poor homes, remain at a low level of attainment.

The snail-hunter: another, even more curious fraternity (I doubt there are many female snail-hunters, it sounds to me like a predominantly male occupation) in the great mosaic we call humanity.

Is there a culture in which slugs are not abominated as aesthetically repellent and economically destructive? If there is not (and I am not anthropologist enough to know whether there is such a culture, for example one which worships the slug as a god), does this mean that man is born with an instinctive dislike of slugs, as chimpanzees are born with a fear of snakes? Few people like sliminess, either literal or metaphorical. For as Othello says:

An honest man he is, and hates the slime
That sticks to evil deeds.

But the Germans say that every little animal has its little pleasure, to which one might add with justice that it has its collector too. My field guide informs the latter how to preserve what the great majority of mankind would wish to destroy, namely slugs, though it does not really go so far as to recommend it:

Whole animals can be kept by pickling in alcohol. Slugs can be preserved in this way, but they shrink considerably, and their colours change.

Instead, photographs are recommended as being more useful and attractive.

Which all goes to show that Hamlet was right when he said:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how
He can even make slugs his study.

 

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