5

 

When I was a child, I wanted to be a zoologist. Truth be told, I still want to be a zoologist today. Sometimes, although I know it is unlikely, I tell myself and others that one day this is what I might be. Meanwhile, I observe animals in the garden and enjoy it very much. There are all types of winged creatures. And numerous insects, jumpers, hoppers, and flyers: butterflies and beetles and crickets and ants, praying mantises, cicadas, and grasshoppers. And creepy-crawlies: scorpions and centipedes and millipedes and spiders.

I find insects particularly interesting. They differ from us humans in a fascinating and thought-provoking way. Most of their behavioral characteristics are not gleaned through learning or experience but are cemented within them from inception, and the cycle they go through—from larva to mature insect—is something unsurpassed in the development of vertebrates.

I wonder: Does the butterfly remember when it was a larva? Does the larva know that one day it will become a butterfly? And the affable antlion that flies through the air, does it remember how it ate voraciously, ambushing its victims in a trap dug in the sand? And which stage in its life does the mosquito love most? When it is a larva swimming in water or an adult flying through the air? We also pass through stages in our lives, but these stages do not encompass such extreme and definitive contrasts between the corporeal and material stage of eating and growing and fattening up and the brief stage of flight and love. We also raise our offspring and educate them, but we do not lay eggs on leaves and simply take off.

Mankind has cataloged insects through different methods, classifying some as pests and others as beneficial. Both types exist in my garden. The longhorn beetle finished off a large fig tree, and the pomegranate playboy butterfly damages the fruit in the tree after which it is named, year after year. I have noticed that, contrary to these insects, all kinds of bees and beetles pollinate the flowers. There are also more mundane insects that gladden my heart and awaken my curiosity, like the Oedipoda grasshopper. When it alights upon the ground, this grasshopper is difficult to see because of its camouflage. But when it is startled and flutters into the air, the Oedipoda spreads extremely colorful wings—I have seen yellow, blue, and red ones—and then, very conspicuously, flies a few feet up into the air, enticing the eye to follow it. Just before landing, it suddenly closes those wings, extinguishing itself and disappearing instantaneously. The eye, already accustomed to the Oedipoda’s vivid coloring, becomes disoriented and loses track immediately.

Once there were plenty of Oedipodas in gardens and fields, but now I hardly ever see them. Butterflies have also become scarce. During my childhood in Jerusalem I saw plenty of them, more than I’ve ever seen here in the valley. This is strange, since Jerusalem’s entire essence stands in contrast to that of a butterfly, to its lightness and colorfulness. It seems that today most of the fliers in Jerusalem are ravens, stones, curses, prophecies, and swallows, but fifty and sixty years ago the city was packed full of white cabbage and swallowtail butterflies—a large and magnificent butterfly whose larvae I raised at home, encouraged by my mother and agreed upon by my father. I fed them on fennel stalks I found in a nearby field. I tracked their eating and development, their metamorphosis and emergence from chrysalis to butterfly. At first, they flew around the house, and eventually they flew right out of the window. Once outside, they changed their flight instantly, the moment the sun’s rays cast warmth and life through them.

To my great sorrow, the firefly is an insect that has almost disappeared. In my childhood there were plenty of fireflies that glowed at night in gardens. I would collect a few of them in the palm of my hand and their light would shine through my fingers. Once—only once, soon after I arrived here—I spied one in the garden. My heart swelled with joy. I hoped this was a sign that more and more fireflies would appear. But my expectations were dashed. There are no fireflies to be seen today, and I deeply miss them.

There are also reptiles in the garden: snakes and agamas and other lizards. Here and there a tortoise appears, but these occasions are few and far between. There are also skinks, legless lizards that are perhaps a transitionary stage between lizard and snake. For some years, the biggest of all skinks lived in my garden, an enormous creature known as a scheltopusik. It can grow to three feet in length; its skin is smooth and shiny and its body firm. At first glance it looks like a snake, but it is nothing more than a huge skink. The scheltopusik is not venomous, of course, but is very strong. When you hold it you can feel its strength as it strives to extract itself from the grip of your hand. All this is a little less entertaining for the scheltopusik, of course, because at a certain moment it stops struggling and sprays particularly repulsive urine and feces in all directions. For this reason, I do not recommend playing this game for too long. One day, the scheltopusik vanished, and that was that. I was sorry but not surprised. There was a time when species disappeared gradually over eons, but today—if a person is attentive and watchful—this can be witnessed in a single generation.

Aside from the butterflies and fireflies I have already mentioned, there were once winter puddles filled with toads in Jerusalem, and huge flocks of starlings that performed spectacular aviation shows. The vultures that nested in the Carmel would glide over the valley, hyenas’ laughs rose up from fields at night, scrub robins spread red tails in thickets, and on winter mornings I enjoyed a very special alarm call: the tap-tapping sound of the song thrush, formerly known in Israel by its Latin name, turdus, as it smashed snail shells on the sidewalk.

There were also joyful flocks of goldfinch back then, frequent victims of greedy hunters, who crossbred them with canaries and put their offspring in cages. I also fondly remember the tortoises, roaming in their dozens through the field near our Jerusalem neighborhood, where it was possible to hear the clicking of their shells during the mating season. Today, even in the nature reserve near my home in the valley, I rarely see them. The tree frogs, those small green affable creatures that appear in the garden, and green lizards too—beautiful and elegant animals—have diminished in number, as have whip snakes.

Many of these small and beautiful reptiles are exterminated by both stray and domesticated cats, who kill them with a mighty paw and outstretched claw, not merely out of hunger but out of a lust for hunting and an urge for amusement that is almost human in its cruelty, and—either out of ignorance or convention or a self-righteous sense of political correctness, or perhaps because cats arouse a lot more tender feelings than frogs and lizards—we ignore the continuous and systematic massacre of other creatures.

It is not only animals that are disappearing. The oak forest facing my home is a remnant of a huge forest that once covered the Lower Galilee, the Menashe Hills, and much of the Sharon area. The Ottoman Empire fed its steam engines on this forest, destroying much of it. Deforestation for agriculture and the coal industry also did its part here, and today there are only three remaining areas: Beit Keshet, Alonei Aba, and Alonei Yitzhak. But small groups of oak, and also solitary oaks, are scattered here and there throughout the previously forested area. In the Jezreel Valley you can still see large solitary oaks in the heart of agricultural fields, left there to provide shade and respite for husbandmen. Who knows? Perhaps one day this land will once again be covered with the ancient forest, and bears will roam through it, and a lion will rise up from the swelling of the Jordan, and who will not fear its roar?