Preliminaries
A finger touched the clay,
and life began. Good start, thought Babu. But after a while he became impatient
with these tiny, ticking, whiskery creatures which he could hardly see, and he
ordered a change.
On this very shore, at the margin of the heaving sea and the shifting land, his
will was done. Bewildered encephaloids crawled into the freezing dawn, to begin
the work of engineering themselves, through countless generations and mistakes,
into reptiles and mammals, and marketing consultants.
Oh well, thought Babu.
From “The
Casso Verses” – © Lowgate Publishing 1997
I have to
admit that I’ve always had problems with the concepts of evolution. I can sort
of understand the principles, but I find the implied numbers mind-blowing.
Looking backwards, it looks very orderly - there appears to be a progressive development of the
species, in that they became better suited to their environment. Of course, I
realise that the theory is that countless other, less successful variants died
out, didn’t make it.
It’s the “countless” bit I have problems
with. If genetic variations are just random accidents, and only the odd lucky
hits work, then the numbers involved seem improbable – even the existence of
the odd lucky hit is a bloody long shot. Anyway, no matter – I am interested in
this stuff. I have recently been watching the DVD set of Prof Brian Cox’s Wonders
of Life, and have vowed to watch it again, to attempt to understand it more
fully. My personal beliefs do not insist that there is some form of conscious
will behind this progression, nor do they require that I should be able to
understand such a thing if there were one, but I have a lot of trouble
accepting that it could work without some form of scripting, without something
or someone having had a peek at the answers in the back of the book. I’d like
to think I keep an open mind on it, and I also like to think that one day it
will make sense to me, but not yet.
To move on from the philosophical to the
ridiculous, we may have a little more evidence this morning. In crude terms, my
understanding is that some variations and mutations just didn’t work. Birds,
for example, which built their nests in dangerous places would be less likely
to survive and pass on their instincts and their habits to their offspring. We
have one such here, at Chateau Foy.
Yesterday a sparrow fell down our chimney,
and ended up in the log stove. This happens very occasionally (though, now I
come to think of it, it was blue tits previously), and is not recommended. It
is upsetting for the bird, and potentially even worse for the owners of the
stove. The stove, of course, was not lit.
We
let it out, having opened all the windows, because birds are smart creatures of
the wild and can spot the way out of a tight situation (e.g. via an open
window) in a flash. The results were disappointing - it flew around, bouncing
off the ceiling, for 15 minutes - it left us eventually, but the living room was
a disaster area. I was too preoccupied at the time to take a photograph, but
here is a picture of a dog which gives the general idea.
You
may imagine me, if you will, with my son’s butterfly net, standing on one leg,
waving it like a fairy wand about 2 seconds after each time the bird has
passed. We should register the film rights. The Contesse performed heroics
cleaning up, and about an hour and a half later things were back to normal – a
lot of work, and really well done.
Sadly,
by this stage the sparrow had once again fallen down the chimney and was back
in the stove. Yes – it was the same sparrow; the moron seems to be attempting to build a
nest inside our chimney cowl.
Now
my instinct at this point was to help speed up evolution and leave the stupid
thing there – with luck it would quieten down when it got hungry and would be
more amenable to being lifted out. At worst, it might die and we would have
strengthened the species as a result. The Contesse, of course, could not
contemplate such heartlessness, and we were obliged to let it out again. This
time the panic lasted only a couple of minutes – I guess the little chap was
tired after the first episode – and the Contesse caught him in the butterfly net before
too much damage was done, and took him outside.
I
know that you are now nodding, waiting for the next appearance of the idiot sparrow
in the stove, and it may still happen, but so far so good. Around 3am - peak thinking hour - I had all
sorts of crazed ideas for making a bag out of 10mm plastic mesh and putting it
over the chimney pot, even a rough design for a mesh bag which would fit the
opening in the stove, so that we had a piece of official kit for rescuing birds
from log stoves – maybe both these devices could be patented, and I could make
a fortune selling them through Scott’s of Stow, along with the sofa-rug-with-sleeves
and their other classic devices for improving the lives of dumb pensioners. Maybe
not.
Maybe
Scotts of Stow gives us another dark hint about evolution, too.
Here are some photos we took during the second visitation.