Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [96]
Just think: if someone had shown you a little old seedling tree potted in a handful of dirt coming in on a ship from Asia all those years ago, asked you to peek into it, and remarked, “These piddly little strands of fungus will knock down a million majestic chestnut trees, starve out thousands of righteous mountain folk, and leave Garnett Walker a bitter old man,” would you have laughed?
If God gave Man all the creatures of this earth to use for his own ends, he also counseled that gluttony is a sin—and he did say, flat out, “Thou shalt not kill.” He didn’t tell us to go ahead and murder every beetle or caterpillar that wants to eat what we eat (and, by the way, other insects that pollinate what we eat). He did not mean for us to satisfy our every whim for any food, in every season, by tearing down forest to make way for field, ripping up field to make way for beast, and transporting everything we can think of to places it doesn’t belong. To our dominion over the earth, Mr. Walker, we owe our thanks for the chestnut blight. Our thanks for kudzu, honeysuckle, and the Japanese beetle also. I think that’s all God’s little joke on us for getting too big for our britches. We love to declare that God made us in his image, but even so, he’s three billion years old and we’re just babies. I know your opinion of teenagers, Mr. Walker; just bear in mind that to God, you and I are much younger, even, than that. We’re that foolish, to think we know how to rule the world.
I’m partial to the passage from Genesis you quoted, but I wonder if you really understand it. God gave us every herb-bearing seed, it says, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed. He gave us the mystery of a world that can re-create itself again and again. To you the fruit shall be food, he’s saying, but just remember, to the tree it’s a child. “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.” He’s looking out for the salamanders there, you see? Reminding us that there’s life in them, too, and that even weeds and pond algae are sacred because they’re salamander food. You’re a religious man, Mr. Walker. Seems to me you’d think twice about spraying Roundup all over God’s hard work.
Never mind. We all have our peeves. Myself, I hate goats (as you well know), and I sorely despise snapping turtles. I’m sure God loves them as much as he loves you or me, but I’ve got new baby ducklings on my pond, and an evil old turtle in there is gobbling them down like the troll under the bridge. I can’t stand it. There was one duckling I loved best, white with a brown wing (I named him Saddle Shoe), and yesterday while I stood and watched, that turtle came up right underneath and yanked down poor Shoe as he flapped and wailed for Mama. I bawled like a baby. I’d shoot that old S-O-B in the head if I had a gun and the heart to use it, so help me! But I have neither, and God knows that is surely for the best.
Yours very sincerely,
Nannie Land Rawley
P.S. I had to rack my brain, but yes, I recall my conversation in the hardware. I was telling a tale on myself: I’m not used