Don't kill my butterflies and baby birds - by Ni Merti

My garden was used to be full of butterflies and dragonflies over the last year. I got lots of flowers which supports diversity and attracts a lot of different animals and insects which are all doing a great job in balancing the eco system in my garden. One morning I sat in front of the windows and I had more than 30 dragonflies hunting around in my garden. Hunting you might say? Yes, dragonflies are hunters, they hunt mosquitoes. Did you know? Well, a single dragonfly can eat up to 25 mosquitoes a day. Makes around 9000 mosquitoes a year. So if I had around 30 dragonflies, makes 270 000 mosquitoes a year. Did you know that? Do you know how much mosquitoes that is???

I have many fruit trees around my place and was happy to have lots of butterflies around them and for sure bees. My papaya tree had just 10 papayas to get ready for my breakfast jam and afternoon fruit plate. My neighbor and me have been very lucky, as we had two trees full of bird nests with lots of baby birds around, hungry all day for mosquitoes and ants and worms and other stuff. We talking about 10 - 15 nests with 4-5 baby birds in them. All of this was in perfect balance. We got some mosquitoes, but with the help of the mosquito lights which just zap them. We had an almost mosquito free zone. Nothing to complain. Yes, we did had a case of Dengue in the last months, but we knew it was not from here. We knew the person got it somewhere else. Simply as there is nothing they could sit in. No water, no bushes. And we got the dragonflies, birds and all those other helpers around.

Last week within a period of just 60 minutes all this changed. I woke up in the morning from a far too familiar sound. The sound of the fumigation machine. I wanted to scream, cry, but I knew it will not help. It was 6h in the morning, I went outside, as I heard they went down another Gang before they would come to us. I got my cats in, my fresh washed laundry, I covered all the little holes in the doors with material and hoped it would be not too bad. 30 minutes later I learned, it can get worse. I never saw a fumigation so powerful. I could not see my car anymore, which was just 5 meters away, even I looked the gate and they could not come in. I stayed in my bedroom, covered the face of my child and my face with a wet cloth and waited. Once it was over, we opened the doors, unfortunately no wind to take it fast away. I got my gardener coming to wash down the trees, my car and all the outside surfaces. My neighbor sent me an sms. She too was frustrated. She just had a tree full of mangoes to get ready.

A day after the baby birds felt off the nests. Dead. Many of them. One my neighbor rescued, it is learning to eat and fly with her now. It is as small as a golf ball... There are no dragonflies anymore in my garden. Nor butterflies. It was over a week when I saw the first one again, must have been on holidays during fumigation. No dragonflies. Not one ever since. As an exchange I got lots of nasty little namuk, which you never can see, never can catch, but hear and they bit you all the time. What an exchange!

I refuse to eat my fruits, some people took them, they don't care what they eat. I do! No papayas for more than a week and a long time to come. It is more than just the dead birds, the dead butterflies and dragonflies. The fumigation is killing us too. If a little bird dies in 24 hours, well, it takes a little more for us. DDT is known to cause many after problems such as early labor, no milk production in the mother after birth, birth defects, learning difficulties, cancer such as leukemia. If a pregnant woman is exposed to it, her child will have a 70% chance of infertility later in life. While scrolling around in the internet I found an even more clear point of view about it. The United Nations declared DDT as one of the most toxic substances in our world and banned it worldwide from the year 2020.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/daily_green_news/58/adding-the-nasty-nine-to-the-dirty-dozen.html

One might ask why only from the year 2020...10 more years of poisoning the world! So, why don't we just ban it out of our lives? Like: If there is DDT, why using it? DDT stays active in the soil for over 10 years. DDT washes into our ground water and we recycle it in our showers. DDT causes too many problems and prevents NOTHING!!!!! More facts can easyly found on the internet for those who still believe it is a good thing to fumigate.

My garden is sad and empty. The birds have gone for the moment. No singing, no visits from dragonflies, no butterflies. But apart from me - Who cares?

Ni Merti - Facing an Silent Garden

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