I live in a rubbish heap!

I used to live in a beautiful countryside. Now I live in a rubbish heap. It’s an enormous rubbish heap. And I’m right bang in the middle of it; or so it seems. And I find it very depressing indeed.

And in the middle of that huge rubbish heap I have my own very small piece of land. Well I say it is my own, but in fact I have borrowed it and my tenure is insecure. One day it is highly likely that others will try to take it over and build dens on it to live in, pushing me off my plot. I won’t like that. I’m a bit of a loner actually, and I’m very happy spending many hours alone on that plot, from which nature provides me with most of my food needs: leaves, shoots, flowers, fruit, seeds and so on. I particularly love the wild strawberries that appear in abundance on my plot each summer. They are sweet and delicious, although fiddly to pluck! I love the warmth of the sun on my back, the soft breeze on my face, the sound of birds singing overhead, the sight of fellow creatures in the distance enjoying just being, on their own pieces of land, along with the rabbits, the pheasants, the mice and the occasional deer.

I say I’m a loner, but once I leave my plot to go back into the wider world around me, I have to join hundreds and thousands of my fellow creatures, as they all hurry and scurry to and fro, often in purposeful straight lines, on specially made tracks, and always, it seems in a rush to be somewhere else!! And these creatures are enveloped in what seem like tough metallic carapaces, of many different colours, shapes and sizes. Actually their shells are not always that tough as they can crumple very badly when they hit others at speed. But many don’t seem to realise that, or even care, judging by the careless way they travel around!

It fascinates me that these creatures need to graze continually. So they often feel the need on their journeys to stop off at food distribution points that they have created for their own convenience across the countryside, some small, others very large indeed, where they can refuel with things to eat and drink. Such food bears little similarity with what I grow and eat. And the liquids they consume are very unlike the natural water that is available for me to drink, that comes out of the heavens above, pure and clean and fresh and healthy. For a start their food and drink is often full of strange chemicals, which may even be poisonous. Who knows? And it usually comes wrapped in tough materials that do not rot down like the vegetative waste on my own little plot. And these creatures are in such a hurry to carry on with their journey, in such a rush to get to somewhere else, that they often take the wrapped food and drink with them into a storage space within their carapaces, so that they can graze as they travel along. This seems dangerous to me. How can they do so many things at once? The worst thing is that when they have finished eating and drinking, these creatures don’t want to keep any rubbish within their shell, so they throw the remains of their feast, the wrappings, out of the shell as they journey along. There are special openings in the sides of the shell which they can open and shut for this purpose. And since those bits and pieces don’t rot down, there they stay, all along the sides of those routes across the countryside; cans, plastic and glass bottles, cardboard and plastic cups, plastic sandwich wrappers, sweet wrappers, cigarette packets, and so on.

And that is why I have to live in the middle of a rubbish heap. And I find it very depressing indeed.

This is the result of one litter pick on one day along a short stretch of the A25 in Surrey. 

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