DIPLOMACY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21763, 31 March 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

DIPLOMACY

BY A NON-

COPING with pests

" It seems such a pity," mourned Barbara, " to kill anything so beautiful."

In the clear, golden sunlight the white butterflies skimmed lightly above our doomed vegetable garden. Certainly they were things of beauty. Wordsworth would probably have written a sonnet about them, while Dorothy mourned for her cabbages. Personally, my sympathies were all with Dorothy. " Of course, they must be killed," 1 said sternly. " They are appallingly destructive; they lay millions of eggs, and then the caterpillars simply devour the whole land." Barbara looked round her with a sigh. "If only they could be trained to devour the right things—to breakfast, say, 011 ragwort, dine adequately 011 wineberry and sup from the golden gorse. It seems curious that with so much scope they should want to settle 011 this one patch of all the seven hundred acres. Anyway, there are too few to bother about yet —only three mother and father and a lady friend." '' Three just now," I conceded, " but butterflies are notoriously loose-living. Come along, Paddy, and help me to catch them." _ __ n . It sounded perfectly simple. Nothing could possibly look less belligerent than a white butterfly; nor are they of a hawk-like swiftness upon the wing. The trouble was that they were air-minded and we were not —particularly Paddy. When I had finished telling him what a clumsy fool he was, the butterflies were soaring imperturbably into the highest ether, while below lay the ruin of our cabbages. Barbara, of course, was wiping her eyes. "If you could only have seen yourselves! Is your nose bleeding much? Paddy, how could you have mistaken it for a butterfly—and a white one, too? Anyway, you've done the garden far more harm in ten minutes than they could have done in a year. Fancy, two' big, strong men and only three little butterflies! Look at them flying away! I'm sure 1 heard one of them titter." I glared up from the ground on which I lay prone in an attempt to stem the flow of my life blood. " Very well," I said spitefully. "Just you wait for a week. Good-bve. I'm going off to cut ragwort and a few of the other pests. At least, they do stay put."

Destructive Beauty Barbara was still watching the butterflies when the car pulled up at the gate. " As soon as he said the name i knew he was that wretch who wants to buy the place from the mortgagee over our heads," she told me later. " But I was very nice to him. I had seen enough of brute force for one day. So I asked him sweetly to admire the butterflies."

It appeared that the visitor, being a man of sound sense, painted a realistic picture of the havoc wrought by these fantastically beautiful little creatures in the course of a few sunny days. " Yes," agreed my wife. " I was just saying what a pity it is that everything that is beautiful—ragwort, gorse, fern and wineberrv—ms so destructive. Even foxglove is lovely, and blackberry,' in the autumn." " Foxglove?" the stranger interpolated sharply. " And did you say blackberry and gorse and ragwort?" It was then, Barbara said vaingloriously, that she had her moment of inspiration. I know those moments. They have burst about us like bombshells during the troublous years of our married life, hurling us ever farther on the downward path. Personally, I have always considered them a strong argument for demoniac possession. " 1 decided suddenly that he should see every spot of corruption on the farm," she told me. " Then, if he liked, to try and turn us out! So I just said carelessly, 'Oh, yes, we've got lots of pests on our section. Would you like to see them?' He seemed rather taken aback at that, and asked me what we were doing for them. ' Oh, nothing much,' I said, trying not to think of you and Paddy cutting ragwort at that moment. ' They're all so beautiful that 1 just enjoy them.' You see. the idea was to put him right off buying the farm."

" It might, incidentally, put him right on to the inspector of noxious weeds," I pointed out coldly, but Barhara swept that aside. " Why Bother?"

" Now, don't raise imaginary difficulties. Well, "he's seen every poisonous growth on the farm —from a distance, of course. I was careful not to go near where you two were toiling. 1 just pointed carelessly to the patch of yellow ragwort in the distance and said something about artists. But the foxglove seemed to impress him most. I gushed a lot about the blues and mauves, but 1 didn't tell him that it was the only patch on the farm, and that we only discovered it last week. By the time we'd had a look at the gorse and blackberry he seemed quite stunned and could only gasp. ' But it takes all the value from your land.' ' Oh, of course,' I said casually, ' but then this lajnd hasn't any real value; it costs more to clean it up than to buy good land. So, why bother.-'' ' But what about your neighbours?' he asked faintly, and 1 told him that all the sections here were the same —lots of pests and not much else. " I looked at him rather pointedly and said, ' This is the land of pests.' He seemed to take it a little personally, and didn't recover even when I took him back to the house and gave him tea and scones and blackberry jam. ' I make lots of it every year, 1 .1 told him brightly, and he really looked at me as if 1 was rather queer." " A man of discernment," I muttered, but Barbara retorted hotly that at least she had managed to deal with the latest pest in a scientific and diplomatic manner. "Much more effectually than you and Paddy dealt with the butterflies," she concluded, with ineffable conceit. Holmes and Watson Two days later 1 open my mail. There was one from Holmes, the man who was thinking of buying our overdue mortgage, making an appointment for that day. There was also a warmlyworded personal letter, as well as a printed notice, from the inspector of noxious weeds The words fo.\g!o\ e, ragwort and blackberry were impressively underlined. " But how on earth could he have seen, that tiny patch of foxglove in the gully?" 1 wondered, and was startled by a gasp from Barbara. " Look at his name," she whispered dramatically; " but that's the name of the man who was here the other day wanting to buy the mortgage." " The name of the prospective buyer," I told her wearily, "is Holmes. This letter is signed ' Watson.' " At the words mv irrepressible wife collapsed into hopeless and hysterical mirth. " And 1 took the inspector round and showed him every noxious weed on the farm," she gasped presently. "No wonder he looked at me strangely. But —Holmes and Watson ! What ridiculous names! No wonder 1 mixed them up. Anyone would—l was never any good at names." "Or at" diplomacy?" I suggested spitefully.