July's Mid-Month Musings: Woman Versus Wildlife

Last year, I decided to get rid of the lawn so P never has to mow it again. I'll give you the full lowdown on how that went next month, with photos. But, this month, I thought I'd write about my garden-based phobias.

Transforming the garden involved digging up the lawn and replacing it with gravel. Despite the fibromyalgia, I found I quite enjoyed the digging, and actually hurt my shoulders less digging than I did using the laptop to mark exam scripts this summer. The gigantic dandelion roots, not to mention the numerous earthworms, had aerated the soil to a satisfyingly friable muck. That's what twenty-five years of neglect does. I actually felt a bit sad that I'd decided to put gravel down. 

The only thing I wasn't keen on, in fact, were the worms. I know they are 'a good thing' but I just find them utterly repulsive. I once almost trod on a dead earthworm, on my kitchen floor, in my bare feet [the mystery of how it got there has never been solved], and I terrified my long-suffering husband by screaming loudly, clambering onto the worktop, and refusing to get down until he removed the corpse. 

Digging has helped me to get used to worms. I felt ludicrously proud of myself the first time I managed to stay on the lawn and keep digging, after an earthworm emerged - I'd previously been leaping onto the path like a kid avoiding the lava, before scurrying inside, shuddering, and unable to do any more that day. This reaction gradually settled down into my being able to remain on the path without running indoors, and then to being able to move to a different patch of garden to continue digging. I was eventually able to take the sudden appearance of an earthworm in my stride, most of the time.

I wouldn't say I have a fear of earthworms. I don't think they're likely to creep into my house at midnight and strangle me in my sleep, or grow to the size of the creatures in that wonderful spoof horror film, Tremors. It's just a feeling of utter disgust at their appearance and the way they move. I know it's irrational. I live in dread of accidentally chopping one in half with the spade, because - though I find them repulsive - I would find the visceral horror of chopping one in half or crushing one underfoot much more distressing than just seeing one wriggling in the soil. It's not their fault I find them repulsive, after all.

This is, I realise, insane and hypocritical, as I’m not a vegan. I happily eat meat and fish and shellfish, but if I had to kill the animals myself, I’m sure I couldn’t do it, unless I was starving to death and all the fruit and veg had been eaten. I’ve always felt weirdly upset about even killing insects. I once came home to find a long parade of ants marching from our front door into our kitchen and across the vinyl flooring. At first, I wasn't too bothered as ants don't generally freak me out. The thing that triggered an anxiety-drenched act of ant-icide, however, was suddenly realising that they were literally all over the dark-coloured work-surfaces - even in the sink, on the dishes we'd left draining, and all over the hob. The counter-tops suddenly looked like they'd transmogrified into a seething mass of black bubbling tar that was somehow alive, and I just lost my mind with panic, grabbed a spray bottle of Flash bathroom cleaner I'd just bought, and started spraying them wildly like a ruthless warrior giantess wielding a huge flame-thrower. It was quite empowering for a few moments.. However, once the adrenaline had worn off, I started imagining what a terrible death that must have been for the ants and I felt like I’d caused an ant apocalypse. I still sometimes have nightmares about it.

"Die, Monsters, DIE!"

I’m not trying to present myself as a soft-hearted buddhist who respects all living creatures. I’m certainly not that. I’ve called in the pest controller to get rid of a wasp nest in the attic bedroom; I’ve put those ant-killing things down that the ants carry back to the nest, thereby killing the whole colony; I’ve swatted the odd fly and mosquito; I've put various types of slug-killer in the garden. 

But I do have this weird, inconsistent reluctance to kill things by hand. I guess I'm by nature a sniper rather than a stiletto-wielding assassin. I even felt sorry for the bloody bee that went down the neck of my top, while we were having lunch in a garden centre a few weeks ago, and stung me on the breast! It crawled out, half-dead, and even while I was gritting my teeth against the pain of the sting, I was upset because it was clearly going to die. 

"Some people will do anything to touch a woman's boob, the perv!" 

While on that subject, I've been stung twice by bees and twice by wasps - neck, finger, breast and wrist [that's the adult version of the well-known kids' ditty]. I am, as you know, what my family calls a 'mardy-arse'; I don't generally handle pain well. I once lost consciousness after banging my finger on the edge of a light-switch plate... Yet, despite what everyone else I know seems to think, I don't think wasp and bee stings hurt all that much. For example, P had no idea I'd been stung on the breast, as I didn't even flinch - I just held my breath for a few seconds and then continued eating my sandwich. The bee left a remarkably large wound which is still not fully healed, three weeks later, so you'd think I would have let out a squeal at least. This is the woman who leapt on the kitchen counter after seeing a dead worm, remember.

I also quite like getting stung by nettles - I don't mean I would deliberately stick my hand in a bunch of the buggers, but if I do accidentally get stung I think it feels quite nice, particularly after the first few seconds. Am I alone in this? Is it a sign of madness?

My sister and my niece are both terrified of wasps and find wasp-stings intolerable. They've both been stung in the past, but mostly, I suspect, because they go insane whenever they spot a wasp. If I was an innocent wasp, simply trying to find the source of that tempting foody smell, and a gigantic human started flapping their hands about frantically and screaming at the top of their lungs, I think I'd feel inclined to sting them too. P and I find it impressive that, when Sis suddenly cries out 'WASPS!', she and her daughter can throw all the picnic items into a carrier bag and be at the other end of the park, trying to break into a random car to get away from the wasps, within seconds.

My niece is actually an RSPCA Inspector, which makes her animal phobias particularly amusing. She has overcome her bird phobia to a large extent, due to her training and experience, and we have seen her dealing with injured swans and suchlike with real professionalism, but she still has her moments. Just before she started her RSPCA training, we took her for a picnic in the Loxley Valley on the edge of Sheffield. The picnic area is idyllic, set beside a picturesque hump-backed bridge under which flows a shallow stream drifting down to Dan Flask reservoir. 

It could be a scene out of an Enid Blyton story - picture the Famous Five riding their bikes past the cricket ground, stopping off to buy ice-creams, then sitting at one of the wooden picnic tables to eat them. Children are paddling in the stream and crossing the stepping stones, families are picnicking on the river bank, ducklings are following their mothers downstream. Then suddenly there is a commotion - a young woman squeals and throws a half-eaten sandwich, like a missile, directly into the face of a big goose - one of those Mother Goose-type geese you see wearing bonnets on the covers of children's fairytale books. The young woman leaps to her feet and takes off like Usain Bolt with Mother Goose closely following her, honking for a bit more sandwich. The young woman vaults the gate and is halfway to Sheffield city centre before her companions have gathered up the picnic - and her eighteen month old son, whom she has apparently, quokka-like, abandoned to his fate. Fortunately, he found the sight of his mother being chased by a large goose very funny indeed.

People have weird phobias, don't they? Niece is also phobic about spiders, people being sick, eating meat cooked with its bones, or cold meat of any kind. I hasten to add that she is a great RSPCA officer, highly competent, hard-working and respected. As long as she doesn't have to rescue a wasp, put a goose in a bird-bag, wrangle a spider or eat a ham sandwich, she's fine.

Most people have some kind of irrational anxiety. My mum is scared of small animals 'because of their tiny bones', which is mystifying to me. She couldn't stay in a house with a mouse in it. We used to get occasional infestations of field mice at harvest time, and that was like a horror film to her. She's also scared of squirrels - she claims that we'd all hate them if they didn't have bushy tails, as they're basically just rats who live in trees. I'm not sure why being compared to a rat is considered to nail an argument so conclusively, though it seems to work for my mum and Jimmy Cagney. Personally, I'm not scared of rats, however - though I don't like their naked tails because they resemble worms, which is a sort of meta-phobia I suppose. 

Mum once had hysterics when a squirrel in Greenwich Park leapt on my then four-year-old niece because it had spotted the packet of peanuts she had in her pocket - I'm certain Mum thought the squirrel was going for my niece's throat. Squirrels are actually quite aggressive little gits and worth being cautious around, but they're still an odd thing to get 'phobic' about. I mean, Yorkshire terriers and chihuahuas are also aggressive, but I've never met anyone who leaps on a kitchen counter whenever she sees one. Though, actually, my mum might be phobic about them as they have tiny bones...

Our friend M has a phobia about eggs. He doesn't like to eat them, raw or cooked, but he also finds them vaguely horrifying when they're still in their shells. I suppose this must give him very mixed messages at Easter, though I don't think he's all that keen on chocolate either. So he's obviously just plain weird.

The thing they'd have to put in Room 101 to make me agree to believe anything they wanted me to - even that Donald Trump is a good president and a nice man - are those large black millipedes you sometimes see in children's petting zoos. They look like shiny black puddings with a fringe of ever-moving legs along their bodies. There'll be a special building where they let people look closely at, and pick up, things like giant spiders and snakes and lizards, under supervision. I like snakes and reptiles generally, and might even one day be persuaded to handle a tarantula, but I draw the line at giant millipedes. I've even been known to refuse to go into parks and other recreational spaces just in case they have an insect house that might contain a giant millipede. 

Well, it might escape. 

You never know.

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