THREE SHORT STORIES

 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

 

26/VI/2025

 

A garden at home generates so many tales. The greenery, the flowers, the frolicking of birds, insects, and reptiles brings smiles, the moment you walkout of the door. There is someone ever so happy to greet you. You greet back and the day is made. The other way round is also true.

 

As I stepped out of the house the other day, I peeped into the neighbours compound where we keep our ‘out of season pots’. There was something amiss. One half of their Neem tree had dried up.

 

One portion was green as green could be but from the other half crisp green leaves came flying to the ground. The whole garden floor was littered with neem leaves. This got me thinking.

 

More leaves have turned yellow and are continuously falling leaving half the tree with just bare branches. I don’t mind as neem leaves make good manure. But, why was only half the tree drying?

 

On close inspection, I found that there was a ficus tree adjacent to it and growing parallel. Over the years that tree had been infested by white ants deep down in its roots. White ants love to chew on bark and must have shifted base. Places where the white ants had crawled had dried those neem branches.

 

White ants provide good proteinaceous snacks for birds. This automatically prevents their spread and keeps them under check. Birds peel off the bark or peck on the finger like protrusions the white ants make with soil hugging the trunk. I let them enjoy it. Why fight nature!

 

Talking about birds. Since the last few days, a pair of crows have been visiting that neem tree regularly. They sit there and crow in a grotesque voice, not at all pleasing to the ears. Moment I point my camera towards them, they scamper.

 

The mystery got resolved this morning. There was commotion in an almond tree right opposite our lane. There was a fight between birds. I thought pigeons or sparrows had been attacked by these crows but it was doves instead.

 

The army tactics of one force engaging the enemy and the other manoeuvring was seen. One crow was gaining attention and moved into the tree. While the other would engage the second dove outside and they would interchange positions. Now I know how the Army evolved its tactics.

 

One of the crows would enter the tree and peck mama dove, while the other one would entice papa dove into a duel and take him away from the scene. Moment mama dove would chase this crow, the other one would dive into their nest, while papa dove sat confused. In the next move the roles were reversed.

 

Finally, one crow got the better of both and stole an egg from their nest. One egg gone yesterday and the second one today. That’s the cycle of life.

 

I followed the crows who flew to the parapet. With one flip of his beak, it hit the egg on the brick wall. Out flowed the juicy contents of the egg. From the side of their beaks they slurped it up. Raw eggs were served for breakfast.

 

The third story was of a storm that had visited us recently. It was nasty and took away a lot of trees in our colony. At one corner of our lane there were huge climbers like the bougainvillaea and morning glory creepers which had engulfed the whole wire mesh and barbed wire fence. They were flowering profusely and adding so much colour to the colony.

 

The force of the storm was so much that this thicket became a’ sail’ of sorts and must have bellowed gathering all the wind. It not only uprooted the plants but took down the boundary wall along with the barricades on which the creepers were resting. Now about a hundred feet of wall is lying on the ground.

 

To reconstruct it, all vegetation had to be uprooted. It will take a lot of time to get to its original state. What I was concerned about was that it also took away a lot of bird nests, especially of Partridges which used to return to these bushes in the evening. Their early morning and evening calls have gone afar now.

 

They used roost for the night in those dense bushes. Today, I saw them on the adjacent wall. I could make out they were coming back to check if their homes were still there. A JCB which is now after encroachments was used to level the area. It did not matter if a few homes were lost. Food for thought!

 

Nature gives mixed feelings. It is survival of the fittest. These three stories caught my attention. Will there be more? I wonder!!!!!!

 

JAI HIND

©® NOEL ELLIS