The sugars are finished. It’s sowing time, prepare the soil, clean up the mess that the winds have left in their path and plug the holes that the rats have dug to gain access to the henhouse.
Although they are not city rats, it is still disturbing. Chickens, ducks and pheasants do not like to share their food against their will. In reality, I don’t know, but I imagine that it is a shared feeling between them and me to not want to be robbed of one’s home by intruders. It is an underground village that the rodents have built for themselves. There were years like that. Cyclic.
There are of course a few stray cats, foxes and coyotes to do some of the regulatory work, but at some point, we cross a point of no return; there are too many rodents in the system.
Last week, in another life, I was stuck for four days in the middle of the river, due to the violent winds which paralyzed all transport systems (air and sea). We cancel things, we rearrange the calendar, we eat cans of food. And we smile.
One afternoon, again because of the winds, a 22-foot tide surrounded the house. Both beautiful and disturbing. The earth is flooded and disappears under water. I go out for a walk (not very far, because it would have taken a kayak, as Céline says) because it’s beautiful. It pulls solid; 95 km/h. The fields disappear under the river for a few hours, then the water eventually recedes and returns to the sea. I told myself that it was like a sort of end of the world, and a new beginning.
With a rather joyful astonishment for some and more tragic for others: crows, gulls, ravens, buzzards, owls, eagles, hawks were having a great time. As water fills the holes and burrows, rats, field mice, mice, muskrats, moles and others must come out and find shelter on the small pieces of land that are not submerged. Yum ! nature said. Big free lunch, all-you-can-eat buffet, for those a little higher up the scale.
And so, I had a little more time than usual to catch up on the news. Ouch! Never do this. Never wean yourself for a week to resume after a break. It hurts.
If we don’t take care of the rats in time, things go south. Or in balls. And we can lose control, and then we have to empty the building, and use products that are not good for the environment. Drastic. Otherwise, it’s infested and infected.
When reading the news, therefore, a bit of the same feeling. Still wars and conflicts in progress, Iran threatens to get involved, NATO too; we are going to expand and extend the distribution of this theater, Trump is going to come back and put all that in order! China is patiently ruminating, so is North Korea. Global warming. And the nuclear threat has just appeared, more and more serious with increasingly frequent threats in Putin’s speeches, with that of a generalized conflict which is no longer a vague danger, but a short-term possibility. .
And during this more or less comfortable era, incredible prosperity: I receive bank statements, which I look at absently, and see that everything is going very well; growth is there, the real estate market is great, interest rates will fall. Profits are being generated, the S&P 500 is breaking records (I don’t know what that is) and a sort of prosperity is taking shape against the backdrop of a rather worrying geopolitical situation. Is something missing? Someone could explain it to me.
Normally, you have to catch the problem before the rats have invaded the entire building. Sooner rather than later, we say.
We know that the tide will eventually go out. But ocean levels are rising every year. There will come a time when it will cover everything. And maybe she’ll end up joining the rat village. That will be happy. In all things bad is good, they say. Happy for a spring where everything is going well, like.