Country Living
I love the countryside.
That is why I moved to a property in an isolated
rural village. Initially, of course, there was
much work to do, but now I think I have created
as near perfection as is possible on this Earth.
My first challenge was the
rabbits. They would roam through the garden,
voraciously consuming plants, and clearly that
had to be stopped. I tried fencing and then
trapping and then shooting, but this simply led
to a reduction in numbers rather than complete
eradication. Scientific contacts from pre-retirement
days, however, finally furnished me with a phial
of the myxoma virus. This led to the outbreak of
myxomatosis which solved the problem of bunnies
not just for me but for everyone in the country.
The next disruption to my
tranquillity came from the birds. Every morning
at dawn they would make an insufferable din, and
obviously that had to end. One solution would
have been cats, but I can’t abide small
furry creatures. Having been involved in research
for the Ministry of Defence for all my working
life, however, I recalled a prototype weapon
which was simply gathering dust at the MoD, and,
after a few phone calls, it was agreed that it
could be stored with me. It was a self-targeting,
motion-activated laser cannon which could shoot
down any moving object between twenty and three
hundred feet in the air, within a radius of a
mile. This was a great success, and I have since
been able to wake-up to blissful silence. The
incidents with that telephone engineer working
thirty feet up a telegraph pole and the
microlight pilot coming into land were minor
inconveniences by comparison. Indeed, the noise
of a fellow villager, God rest his soul,
persistently flying his microlight was a great
nuisance, so that was ‘two birds with one
stone’ - so to speak.
Even with these problems
resolved, however, I felt overwhelmed with the
challenge of other vermin. Moles, foxes, badgers,
hedgehogs, deer - the list seemed endless. At one
point I almost abandoned my dear home. Thank
heavens, therefore, for anti-personnel mines.
Once again, my old colleagues came to the rescue,
and I was able to liberally deploy these
wonderful devices all over my land - within mole
runs, near fox holes and badger sets, and along
boundaries. Admittedly the regular detonation of
ordnance led initially to many sleepless nights,
but now almost complete peace prevails. I feel,
however, that I must once again offer my deepest
condolences to the relatives of those who used
the adjacent public footpaths and the loved-ones
of my last three postmen.
The final battle was won
with remarkable ease. Initially the butterflies
and insects seemed unstoppable. The fact that
they were attracted by certain species of plant,
however, was the clue to their defeat. I recalled
that the MoD had dumped tons of chemical
defoliant at a disused airbase not twenty miles
from my home. This allowed total annihilation of
all plant species within half a mile of my
property and has now produced Heaven on Earth.
I love the countryside.
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