"I
once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was
hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by
that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have
worn."
Henry David Thoreau
Dr Abe V RotorLiving with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School on Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
House sparrows (Passer domesticus) frolic in a pool left by rain.
Gordiun,
that's how we call this bird in Ilokano, almost a password for us kids
in our time with slingshots worn necklace style, our
pockets bulging with carefully picked gravel stones. We were "soldiers
of fortune" when the gordiun is fat at harvestime, and how we relished
it grilled in today's term, and how we raided its nest and took its
young.
This bird together with other Passer
members are products of co-evolution in rice territory - their life
cycle jibes with that of rice - the traditional varieties that stay in
the field for the whole monsoon season. And then comes October. By then
they number to hundreds, thousands over the horizon. What makes it
worse is the gordiun is related to the maya, equally if not more
destructive. raiding ricefields about to be harvested, stealing grains
from the mandala and the garung - a giant circular basket to keep threshed palay as buffer stock in today economic term.
That's
why our old folks allowed us to carry this deadly improvised weapon,
traced to the history of David, with the enemy a hundred times more than
a single Goliath - more elusive, more mean, more intelligent.
Like
its counterpart in the rodent world - the rat - the gordium has
likewise learned to live with humans, but never, never allowing itself
to be domesticated - unlike the cat and the dog. Not the gordiun, not
the rat as well - two stubborn co-inhabitants in man's dwelling. And
the wonder of it all is that they can adjust to modern living, and in
fact to today's postmodernism. They live in cities among high rise and
shanties, the rats on garbage, and the gordiun on food waste and pest.
We
were the Mark Twain kids of the fifties - the likes of Huck Finn and
Tom Sawyer. Like them we were abandoned by time - shall be say, age -
and ambition, industrialization, and exodus to the city. We have
surrendered our weapons, so with the adventure and fun we were supposed
to hand over as heritage to our children and the younger generation of
today.
Pavlov
is undoubtedly correct when we talk of the resilience of instinct, its
ability to cope with fear, deprivation and aggression for the sake of
survival of the species as a whole. That's how the gordiun - and all
animals for that matter - succeed in adapting to the changing
environment.
But
there is something strange going on, not anticipated by the great
psychologist; similarly Darwin did not foresee the impact of modern
science and technology: the steady annihilation of species to the point
of extinction In fact hundreds of species of the estimated millions
have permanently perished, and more in accelerated pace will follow
suit.
I
look back at my Gordiun - the one that refuses domestication, the one
that plays the most skillful hide-and-seek game, the most challenging
target of our slingshots, the one that lives up to 20 years among
humans - not in the forest though, the one that never migrates in
neither habagat nor amihan - unlike the migratory birds of
the north coming down south and returning after winter. And the one
that is the symbol of joy and being carefree, yet the epitome to bonding
as family and flock.
I
have long dismissed the gordiun's destructiveness. In fact I
explained to farmers and housewives, the birds do more good
in housekeeping - picking morsels, ridding the place of vermin. They
are part of the food web and therefore help in maintaining the integrity
of the ecosystem. They are insectivorous and predators, and they keep
weeds population down that would otherwise compete with our crops, by
eating their seeds during the off season. It is for this matter that
their dispersal all over the world in all continents
except Antarctica was assisted by man because they are excellent
biological agents. In general we have learned to accept them, as they
have learned the same.
A
change of human attitude crept in when the gordiun's population has
dropped from the flock we used to watch and admire, the chorus of songs
though inferior to the canary, and by their very presence alone that
keeps us company. This is what is happening all over the world because
of pollution, global warming, loss of habitat, pesticides, and the like.
I
watched a gordiun lost its way and ended up in our sala trapped. It
was raining hard and I said, you can stay here. Restless, it rammed
against the wall and ceiling, then perched nervously on the curtain
looking at me long and hard.
Suddenly I became a boy once more - this time without the dreaded slingshot around my neck.~
Photo Credit: Google, Wikipedia
No comments:
Post a Comment