Know those lime plants that are so popular during Chinese New Year? Well, they are a favourite with caterpillars too. When I was a kid, I used to look out for these little critters and kill them off for chewing up my mom's limes. I look back with regret because they would have eventually become beautiful butterflies.
When I got a bit older and wiser, I collected the caterpillars in bottles and fed them with lime leaves until the larvae morphed into pupae and later emerged as beautiful flying insects. I don't think anything comes closer to perfection than a newly-born butterfly.
[Image by LC Goh.]
Remember that song by Joni Mitchell called Big Yellow Taxi? Here's part of the lyrics:
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
They took all the trees
Put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see em
Hey farmer farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
To put up a parking lot
They say that what man does not understand, man destroys. Ain't that the truth? We take paradise and turn it into a parking lot - for our convenience. And then worry about pollution and getting fat.By paving every inch of ground, rain water runs straight into drains resulting in flash floods and massive traffic jams. Aren't we too clever for our own good?
When we see a field full of lalang grass, we worry about snakes and mosquitoes. Again we get it cleared and the rain washes the top soil away turning the land barren. I recently watched a documentary about rich black soil in northeast China. Apparently the soil is actually dead grass! So maybe we should just leave that lalang alone to rejuvenate the land!
Trees and vegetation hold a lot of carbon. They call the Amazon forest a giant "carbon sink". When jungles are cleared, the carbon is released into the air, causing global warming. The carbon is also absorbed by the seas, turning them acidic and killing off the coral. Our oceans are slowly becoming underwater deserts and garbage dumps!
These days, everybody is running around trying to reduce their "carbon footprint"! Well, one sure way to do that is to plant a tree! Why don't we go out and do just that? Instead of chopping everything down in the name of civilisation? The leaves will also filter out a lot of the dust from our polluted air and help our over-worked lungs.
It's really time we stopped treating nature as our enemy!And I should go back to rearing those wonderful butterflies.
