There are not as many mockingbirds these days, and with the decrease in numbers their boldness has lessened. Their preferred diet is bulky insects, and their clan has not prospered on the fare of poisoned bugs we have provided for them in our ghastly and futile efforts to eliminate mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, adjusting quickly to poisons, achieving immunity to one dire brew after the next, are bigger, huskier and more numerous than ever, and now thrive all year round in Florida. For the first time in modern history the spraying equipment in the Fort Myers area was used so intensively all winter that by spring when the millions turned to billions, there had been no chance to dismantle, clean, and maintain their hard-pressed and increasingly futile equipment.
Ten and twelve years ago, both at Piseco Lake and in Florida, in the long dusks of hot weather there were shimmering legions of dragonflies, darting, wheeling, feeding on the mosquito, the gnat, the sand fly — such numbers of them that sometimes they would perceptibly darken the sky. But we poisoned them with the sprays, and they are gone. Now, at Piseco, we get stung all season rather than just up to about the eighth of July on the average, and in Florida we get welted all year round instead of from April to October.
Rachel Carson made a profound objection on the basis we are poisoning all the living things on our planet. I object on the basis we are far worse off now than we were when we started. Ask the ranchers who, in these recent years of incomparable progress have had thousands of head of cattle killed by mosquitoes so dense the young beef have choked to death and the mature animals have, in panic, run themselves to death. I think the mockingbirds would vote for immediate federal control of this stupendous idiocy presently conducted for the most part by self-styled experts who can’t even read the warnings on the container. The mosquito-control man in Sarasota County, Mel Williams, is one of those rarities, a valid expert, who feels that spraying is a questionable and partial answer. He gets results by eliminating the breeding areas, but we can do nothing about the clouds of trillions of them which blow in from less enlightened counties when wind and weather are exactly right.
One point has never been properly emphasized in this endemic condition of overspraying by local governmental bodies throughout the country. Capital expenditures are made on a low-bid basis, and under these conditions there is small chance for any squeeze, grease, or rakeoff. But the lethal goo for the spray equipment is purchased as are other “supplies,” and here it is tradition in thousands of counties and thousands of communities that the men in office get their little sweetening in the form of kickbacks from the suppliers, thereof be the item paper clips, liquid soap, prison potatoes, or compounds so lethal that children have died after playing with the containers they came in months after they have been emptied. So when Joe Courthouse needs pocket money, he will cheerfully drench his community with another thousand dollars’ worth of bird-killer, explaining that he is fighting the good fight against noxious, disease-bearing bugs. If they buy a hundred-year supply of liquid perfumed soap for the city hall washrooms, they are in trouble. But you never pile up an incriminating stockpile of poison. You can spread it as fast as you can buy it, and so can the man who beats you in the next election. And the more attractive the kickback, the bigger the volume. No wonder it has become such a huge, profitable industry in an astonishingly short time.
Federal licensing of compounds and federal permits for each spray project based on prior saturation of the area would take a lot of the beguiling charm out of this gravy train.
Also, in Florida, it would be very interesting to find some way of hamstringing the arrogant and powerful citrus industry so that the terrifying discovery of four or five Mediterranean fruit flies would not immediately result in the air-dropping of untold tons of poison of unknown side effects on humans, birds, and animals in densely populated areas. Fellows, how come they manage to have so much fruit in the places the fruit fly comes from?
The cats reached another point of evolvement during residence on Acacia Street. Roger perfected his con-artist technique and became a shamelessly lazy slob. In the very beginning he did all the washing of himself and the kitten brother. Somewhere along the line there must have come a time when he did half. But by that winter he arrived at the permanent minimum. After eating they would wash each other’s faces. Rather, Rog would give Geoff a couple of apparently diligent licks to get Geoff started. They would sit facing each other. Roger would suffer himself to be thoroughly washed, returning not a lick, fatuously enjoying every moment of it. As soon as Geoff began to show signs of stopping, Rog would give him another couple of swipes, and that would get Geoff going again. Roger, that winter, began to wear the visible signs of the con artist — a shining white face and tattle-tale-gray feet. Cats do not wash each other’s feet. Geoff was always tidy. He took care of himself in his spare time.
A cat — fed, clean, content, and pleasantly tired from outdoor adventure — seems to have a curious ability to find some place to rest which will put it on display in a pleasing fashion. It is such a subtle trait it is most difficult to detect. Cats like high places. They like soft places. Often these are also artistically pleasing to the human eye when adorned by a resting cat. Except in the very hottest weather, a cat’s sleeping and resting positions are graceful. When it is very hot, the trusting cat will sleep on its back, hind legs splayed, front legs sticking up in the air, bent loosely at the wrist. We had an opportunity for many years of observation of these two animals, and we are both convinced that given a choice of two places of equivalent cat comfort, more than 50 per cent of the time the cat will select the one where it looks the best. For example, if there is a dark couch with two dark cushions and one cushion in a bright, clear color, all equally soft, the cat will spend 60 per cent of his couch time on one or another of the dark cushions, and 40 per cent on the bright one, thus showing a preference though not a consistent and invariable one.
Both cats broke things. Roger would bust them in reckless, racing cat-games. Geoff had a far more deliberate procedure. Resting quietly on a mantel, a bureau, a table, a breakfast bar, he would reach out and start gently patting some frangible thing toward the edge, moving it a quarter of an inch per pat. When it fell and shattered, he would hang over the edge and stare down at all the pieces, then stare at whoever was chewing him out with a sort of What-do-you-know-about that! expression. Sure broke, didn’t it?
As the school year drew to a close we realized we could spend our first full summer at Piseco. We had been in correspondence with Floyd Abrams about the camp, and it had been well started, and we could be there for the rest of the work. We made arrangements to rent a small camp not far along the lake shore from Wanahoo, almost directly across the lake from the new camp. We wanted to return to Clearwater, but the house on Acacia Street was too small. Before we left we found a larger house on Bruce Street, several blocks further north along the island, where there would be less traffic than on the Acacia corner, and acquired it long enough before we left so that we could carry things over and store them there, little by little.