O, Jerusalem

It's Saturday night, Tisha B'Av, I am home from Shul having just listened to Eicha (Lamentations) and the Fast has begun. And I am thinking of the Olympics, especially about how the BBC refused to name Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (but named East Jerusalem as the capital of the future state of Palestine). And I can't help thinking how, putting aside the rank anti-Semitism and Arab-fawning that the Brits and many other peoples of the world are so good at, that we Jews do it to ourselves. The Jewish Federation has dropped the word 'Zionism' from its current charter because it is 'too controversial'. And the dickwit Democrat Jews who voted for Obama are just starting to see that maybe he isn't such a good friend of Israel after all despite all the high-flown rhetoric about 'Israel and Jerusalem, indivisible' (changed his mind soon after he said that, didn't he? Before kowtowing and humiliating himself and the US in front of various Arab leaders).
I put it to you that any Jew, any person, who looked at what the 9th of Av means and what Jews do to observe it and what we read in Eicha, would immediately understand the deep, true and real connection between Jerusalem and the Jewish people. For 2000 years we Jews have been yearning for our homeland and our Holy Temple. For 2000 years we fast from sunset to sunset, not drinking or eating, not bathing or using cosmetics and lotions, not having intimate relations and not wearing leather shoes, all customs of deep mourning We sit on the ground or on low chairs just as we do when sitting Shiva, mourning a dead parent, sibling, spouse or child R'L. 2000 years.
Ask non-Orthodox Jews how they express their Jewishness and you will hear many different replies. Some might go to a Seder on Pesach. Some might fast on Yom Kippur. Some might unplug on Shabbat. Or they might light Chanukah candles Some, an increasing number I think, would have not much more knowledge of Jewish custom and many would not even have that. So a secular or unaffiliated Jew who has had the usual crap Jewish education on offer from other secular Jews might be in love with Tikkun Olam and Tzedaka, maybe recognizing them as intrinsic Jewish Mitzvot, maybe not, but they sure won't know about Tisha B'Av.
And if you don't know your history then you will listen with your generous, caring Jewish heart to the nefarious, egregious pack of lies called 'the Palestinian Narrative', and before you can say 'Ben Gurion', you will side with them. Because, my dear secular/reform/progressive/reconstructionist/humanist Jew, if you don't learn and respect your history and heritage then how do you expect the rest of the world to respect you and your history and heritage?
You know, it is entirely possible to learn Jewish history both ancient and modern, and about Israel and the unbreakable link with the Jews, without being religious. A true reading of history will give across the facts; but history, unlike say, Maths, is easily warped and twisted according to the political bent of the teacher. But when you sit on the floor and fast and read Eicha, you know that all around the world Jews are doing the same. We have been doing so ever since the Romans destroyed the 2nd Temple and laid waste to Jerusalem, and renamed Judea 'Palaestina' and Jerusalem 'Capitolina'. And if you know a bit more you will know how at the end of the Seder we say, 'Next Year in Jerusalem' , also after the fast on Yom Kippur. And if you look at any version of the Siddur, you will see this yearning for Jerusalem, whether you are Ashkenaz or Sephardi. In the Grace after meals, we pray for Jerusalem. At every Jewish wedding we remember Jerusalem. This is NOT propaganda. Propaganda does NOT inform a people for 2000 years in a clear continuous line.
So when the Waqf tries to pretend that the Temples never existed, while deliberately trashing the archeological evidence; and when Arab 'historians' pretend either that today's Jews are not remotely related to the Hebrews or Jews of antiquity, or, comically, that the Palestinians are descendants of the original Canaanites; or that the Jews are in any way not entitled to Eretz Yisrael with Jerusalem as the capital; well, the world can only do that to us if we have allowed them to.
And unfortunately, we are allowing them to. I keep talking about the US because that's where the Jews are, apart from Israel (which has also created huge problems by not educating secular Israeli kids about ancient and modern history; there's nothing more secular than a secular Israeli); the rest of the Diaspora is piddling small compared to the numbers of American Jews. And, my American Jewish friends, if you don't wake up to your history and heritage then there will be no future for you. It will take a lot more than a few bus loads of Birthright kids to turn that around.
'if I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget what to do, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth'. A Jew without Torah is like a body without a soul. And a Jew without Jerusalem is lost, powerless and speechless.
Am Yisrael Chai.

A minute is too long for the IOC

I am a little spooked by the fact that the Olympic Games start on Tisha B'Av this year. And I am righteously angered that the Olympic community didn't think that a single minute should be wasted on remembering the Israeli athletes who were murdered in Munich in 1972.
But I guess it's too much to expect the English to acquiesce to this request from the Israelis/Jews with their petitions. It might annoy the Arabs, and heavens, the Brits wouldn't want to do that. The Brits have always been careful to suck up to, I mean, get along with Arabs. You could say that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was a rare little spark of philo-semitism which took place when everyone's attention was on the horrors of World War 1, and then from after WW1 the British Mandate did whatever it could to rectify that error. Ah yes, T E Lawrence had just looooved those flowing robes and the Romance of the East. And it would have been all camels swaying in the pitiless desert and the mystery of the Orient and all that but then the Arabs went and found oil. And everything changed for the worse as far as The Jews were concerned. Balfour Shmalfour. League of Nations, meh. Then the British took a leader of a tribe of goatherders and gave him what was supposed to be part of the Jewish Homeland, Transjordan, and Voila! King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was born. And since he was a king, the British bowed to him. I'm not making any of this up. I could go on and on about the British in Mandatory Palestine and what total bastards they were, but I won't. When I stood outside Marks and Spencer's in London a few years ago and saw how many Arabs were passing by, I remember thinking that the Brits had it coming. So do the French, for their colonial policies in the Maghreb. But somehow it's always the Jews who pay the price.
But I digress.
I love the Olympics. I love watching the swimming and gymnastics and running and basically whatever they serve up on TV. (Not sure about synchronized swimming though.) All elite sport is just awe-inspiring. All that effort for years and years, all coming down to split seconds and millimeters sometimes. (I love the Tour de France more, though, but that's for another post.)
But why do these people have to be such bloody Jew-haters? From Avery Brundage to Juan Antonio Samaranch, well maybe he wasn't so bad, but certainly no philo-Semite. Jacques Rogge isn't shaping up too well either. So Olympics, yay! But the IOC- boo! One lousy minute of silence to recognize and honor the memory of the 11 murdered athletes. It would have been fitting, especially on Tisha B'Av.

FURTHER ON CIRCUMCISION...

My recent post, ‘The Unkindest Cut? Maybe Not’ was picked up and published by Galus Australia, lightly edited in a way that probably removed most of the humor, and WOW didn’t the intactivists come out in force.

So after I have been accused of being ‘intellectually slack’, immoral, homophobic, pro-'genital butchery', and a child abuser as well as an incompetent doctor who knows nothing about being a male infant, I thought I would revisit the topic. Because I can’t wait to see what else they will accuse me of.

There are 2 branches to this anti-circumcision argument:

1-   It shouldn’t be done to children who are unable to consent to any procedure, and thus, circumcising a minor is a criminal offense. This is what I was writing about, and the German court was actually NOT outlawing circumcision, rather it was outlawing non-medical circumcision on a minor. In this  way, the German court that decided this cannot be accused of being anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim. ‘We don’t mind if you want to circumcise for religious reasons, just not until he is 18. (So you may observe your religion, as we see fit).’

2-   Circumcision should never be done for any reason that is not medical.

So for those charmers who demand to know my medical opinion on non-medically necessary circumcision? I’m against it. Yes, I agree that infants, young children or anyone in fact, should not have a circumcision unless there is a medical problem such as phimosis, or unless they live in Sub-Saharan Africa, where male circumcision has been shown in several controlled studies to lower the rate of HIV transmission significantly.

However, I am in favor of Brit Milah.

I am a Jew and I don’t take that responsibility lightly. I am a Jew because my mother was a Jew, and her mother was a Jew, and her mother was a Jew, and her mother was a Jew. Beyond that, I confess, I’m guessing, because the records were all destroyed in the pogroms. I’m not a Jew because I woke up one morning and thought that it would be cool to be a Jew. I didn’t look at the history of the Jews in the 20^th century, or the 19^th, or 18^th, or anytime in the last 2000 years and say, ‘Way-hey, I want me a piece of that!’ I didn’t ever think, 'Wow, cholent! That makes it all worthwhile'. It took me a long time and a lot of learning and living to love and appreciate the Jewish things, like Shabbat, Kashrut, Mikvah. (Well, as far as Mikvah is concerned, don’t get me wrong, it’s a real spiritual powerhouse, but let’s just say that there’s one or two things I love about menopause, and leave it at that.)

I have three beautiful sons (my daughters are beautiful too, for any who are reading this) and well do I remember the clutching of my heart and the lump in my throat and the strong desire to snatch my newborn away from the Kvatter and run. My precious, pink, soft and infinitely vulnerable little bundle with 10 tiny fingers and 10 tiny toes and a tiny little penis with a teeny-tiny little foreskin. And a Jewish mother; me. And 3,000 years of history. And an Eternal Covenant between G-d and the Jews. And the decision was made. The choice was made thousands of years ago, when HaShem chose the Jews to perfect the world and create a ‘Dirat beTachtonim’, a dwelling place for G-d on Earth.

I don’t know the mind of G-d. I don’t understand the Holocaust, or the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion, or all the atrocities perpetrated on Jews for being Jews. All I know, as a human, as a mother, as a doctor, is that there are things which go beyond the rational, beyond the intellect. So much in Judaism doesn’t make sense, even though after the fact it might. I don’t keep kosher because it’s a healthy way to eat; I don’t avoid shellfish because they might be contaminated with E coli; likewise, I don’t keep Shabbat because studies have shown that it’s a good way for families to connect. I didn’t keep the laws of Taharat HaMishpacha because of a lesser risk of cervical cancer or because the separation made for fun reunions. These things may or may not be true, but they all depend on an intellectual appreciation of these practices.

No. I observe them because I am a Jew and they are an intrinsic part of G-d’s commandments. I may not be a perfect Jew and my observances may not be perfect at all times, but I am a Jew, and there are great responsibilities that come with it. One of those is to ensure that my sons have Brit Milah, preferably on the 8^th day of life, whether I agree with it or not as a doctor or a mother. And if that makes me an ignorant, superstitious savage, well, that’s some peoples’ interpretation. I will never be able to convince them otherwise, because the thing about Faith is that you need faith to have it. If you don’t believe, then you don’t believe, and there is nothing that I can say or do to make a non-believer have faith in G-d and His goodness. It cannot be argued logically, not by the likes of me, anyway. Maybe if Lord Jonathan Sacks and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz and, I don’t know, Moshe Rabbenu all got together in a room with all the intactivists, maybe that would convince them of the importance of Brit Milah, but I don’t think so.

So, for all those anti-circumcision crusaders, feel free to worship your foreskins and the physical perfection of yourselves and your sons. But leave Brit Milah alone, because it is about a lot more than a piece of skin.

FIFTY SHADES OF MORAL AMBIGUITY

And now, an unlikely segue from the sublime world of particle physics to the absolutely ridiculous world of trash fiction:

Fifty Shades of Grey.

I confess, I read this book. A friend gave it to me (in a brown paper bag) and I had heard of this publishing phenomenon which has sold tens of millions of copies and which is reported to have changed women’s lives. It’s erotica, which is what you call porn when it is written by a woman? And yep, there are lots of sexy bits in it.

The Plot: Innocent college graduate meets rich, young, handsome but kinky businessman who has a Dark Secret; he’s into BDSM and wants to dominate her. She is in thrall to him, up to a point. It seems he was neglected and abused by his drug-addicted mother and then was adopted age 4 by decent folks. Then he was seduced age 15 by an older woman who introduced him to all this stuff. Sorry if that’s spoiled it for you, but really, I have saved you time as well as the effort of ploughing through some of the worst writing I have seen outside Mills and Boon.

Yeah, yeah, very sexy stuff, but she goes on and on about ‘her subconscious’ always sneering at her and berating her (lovey, that’s not what a subconscious is, but never mind) and her ‘inner goddess’ cheering her on whenever she does something sexy, and I cannot begin to tell you how annoying this narrative device is.  And how many times can we read how attractive this man is, in how many ways, and yada yada yada. Frankly, it all gets boring.

And as I read, I kept thinking of a book I read in the 70’s called ‘The Story of O’ which was, even when translated from the French, infinitely better written and far more disturbing. Same sort of topic but, even though I know nothing about BDSM, it felt much more real and was far more confronting than this Fifty Shades thing. It was also written by a woman, it was also supposed to be fantasy, but it raised questions about power and its abuse, among other things. But 50 Shades is selling itself as a romance novel. It seems to me that Christian Grey is to Doms what Edward Cullen is to vampires. And it turns out that author E L James started her illustrious literary career on a Twilight fan site, imagining steamy scenes between Edward and Bella. As if the original story isn’t bad enough.

‘Twilight’ is another hugely successful series,written by a Mormon housewife on her kitchen table, after the kids were in bed, and it has been made into movies which have girls and women swooning. Also appallingly written; I read the first book and saw the first movie (on a plane,in my defence) and What Crap. I don’t mind a proper vampire, like Anne Rice’s Lestat, (although she does go on a bit), or the original and best, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Truly, if you want to read about vampires, read that, and marvel at how the book has stood the test of time, even if it is written in an old-fashioned epistolary style. It is still terrifying. So give me a vamp that is so evil that it deserves a stake through the heart, one that fries in agony and burns to ashes in the sunlight, not a pretty one that plays baseball in thunderstorms and sparkles in the sun, like Edward Cullen. A My Little Pony vampire, who loves and protects a mortal girl. And a fairy-tale handsome Prince Dominant, who doesn’t want to hurt his Submissive too much. 

Give me a clear line between good and evil. Give me a Van Helsing, hunting down the evil Count. Tell me about BDSM, but show it for what it really is. Getting your kicks by inflicting pain on others, or by having pain inflicted on you, is not a fun, light-hearted romantic lifestyle. It is actually a sick perversion.

In 50 Shades, we have sex and danger, how exciting! But not too much danger. Safe danger. How sad that there are all these women who consider these books to be ‘life-changing’. I say ‘Feh!’ to the whole genre, but if you want to read about it, maybe read the classics. At least don’t try to sanitize these awful, horrible subjects, these perversions, and turn them into something gently titillating and suitable for general consumption.

In the interests of research, I decided that I would really go to the source, and I read Justine, by the Marquis de Sade. It took me a couple of hours, and I felt like I needed a shower and a dip in the mikvah afterwards. Truly, such utter filth and depravity, with the evil characters spouting de Sade’s philosophy and worldview; hard to know what was worse, the deeds described or the thinking behind them. But he does show that if you have a godless and nihilistic outlook on life, that eventually hedonism can only take you so far before you seek out more and more and worse and worse until the sadist becomes so numbed that only foul murder remains as a thrill. And there is this nasty running joke about how Justine, by clinging to her virtue and optimism and religion, basically staggers from one situation to another far worse one, again and again; and when she is finally rescued by her long-lost sister (a successful courtesan), and is finally happy, she is struck and killed by lightning. So the wicked prosper and the virtuous suffer, and there is no G-d, and it’s all a hideous cruel joke; why bother being good or merciful, says de Sade.

To think that it was this unspeakable man who spawned these depraved writings and philosophy, which have then been diluted and tempered and filtered over the years to become the core of a best-selling romance story; this is particularly repugnant.

So I read 50 Shades, and it did NOT change my life. Except to make me despair of the human condition.

I KNOW NOTHING

I don't know about you but I read stuff in the papers and other publications, notably Scientific American, as well as the books of Oliver Sacks, which I love, and for a little while I think that I actually understand what is going on in the worlds of neuroscience or economics or politics. And then I go away and have a think about it and realize that, in fact, I don't remotely understand these things at all.

This past week there has been a huge event, a historic event, an event which will change the way in which we conceive of the world in which we live. I refer, of course, to the discovery of:

The Higgs Boson.

This is enormous news in the world of physics. 50 years ago, an English physicist, Peter Higgs, postulated that there was a subatomic particle which did something to make energy into matter by giving mass to other subatomic particles. This hypothetical particle was nicknamed the ‘God particle’ and it explained something about the universe and its beginnings. So for 50 years physicists looked for it, in vain. But nowadays there is this humungous machine called the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. This machine itself is impossible to understand; it is built underground in a circular tunnel which is 27km in circumference and  cost over 10 billion dollars. It has been running for 2 years now, and it uses gigantic amounts of power to smash subatomic particles together so that physicists can look at the bits that shake loose, somehow, I don’t know, and finally they found what looks like the Higgs Boson. Peter Higgs is very happy and may win a Nobel prize. Apparently everyone cheered when the likelihood of this being a fluke was ‘5 sigma’, which means it’s not a fluke, and this is what they are reporting in the press.

Do you have any idea what any of this means? Neither do I. But I love the analogies which they come up with to explain it. ‘It’s like one basketballer passing a ball to another, and that’s the boson’. Say what?

‘It’s as if Miranda Kerr [a very pretty model] walks through a boys’ school and, as she passes through the school yard, more and more boys come running up and mill around her, so that when she leaves, she is dragging along this mass of schoolboys, and that’s what the boson does.’ Right.

Physics people, give up. The closest any of us mere mortals come to this world is The Big Bang Theory. And we laugh at the genius nerds!

These analogies are on par with Einstein’s explanation of the Theory of Relativity. When asked to explain it in language we could understand, he said something like ‘When you are sitting on a park bench with a pretty girl for an hour, it feels like a second. And when you sit on a hot stove for a second, it feels like an hour.’ Oh, I get it! NOT.

And anyway, I want to know WHO MADE THE HIGGS BOSON.

THE UNKINDEST CUT? MAYBE NOT.

On June 26 this year the District Court of the Federal State of Cologne, Germany, ruled that the circumcision of boys for religious reasons at the request of parents constituted the infliction of bodily harm and was therefore a punishable offense. The decision was made after a case of a  4 -year-old Muslim boy who suffered complications of bleeding 2 days after his circumcision by a Muslim doctor. The doctor was acquitted, but, in future, any doctor performing a circumcision in this sort of situation would be liable for prosecution, as would the parents who allowed it.

Of course, this criminalization of male circumcision affects Jews as well. In fact, the outcry against this legal decision is one great big uniter of Jews and Muslims in Germany, for what that’s worth.

It turns out that there are 220,000 Jews living in Germany- who knew?- and vastly more Muslims. And, unlike the Germans, whose birthrate is around 1.3 children per woman, along with the majority of western countries whose birthrates are below population replacement levels, the Muslim birthrate is WAY above replacement levels, so you do the math.

Therefore I personally think that this ruling will not hold up because the Muslims will protest and nobody wants a Muslim protest! Imagine all the burning Mercedes-Benzes and Audis and the loss of Ordnung in the street. Unconscionable. So I would think that, ironically, it will probably be the Muslims who will save the day so the Jews will be able to continue a 3,000-year-old practice which is so dangerous, that Jews are still around. So traumatizing to the helpless infant that Jews still win more Nobel Prizes than anyone else.

Yes, it is so dangerous that, in Africa, adult males are clamoring to be circumcised as it has been shown to be effective against the transmission of HIV.

Yes, yes, I know what the issues are here; it’s about harming a child who has no ability to consent to a non-medically necessary procedure. Even if his parents request the procedure, even if the operator is a doctor. The issue is also about the transcendence of the Body over the Soul. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yes, the Ancient Greeks. And the Romans.  And the Soviets. And where are they today?

I know that this topic tends to generate more heat than light when it is argued. There are comparisons made to female genital mutilation, which is already illegal in Germany and other countries, as if the two procedures could be remotely compared in outcomes and effects on the child’s future. As if there is a skerrick of evidence that FGM had any positive outcomes either! Not a one, only damage to girls for no reason except ‘to protect their honour’, whatever that is construed to mean. Whereas male circumcision sometimes needs to be done for medical reasons –which IS allowed under this German ruling - and can protect against HIV, for example, female genital mutilation has only negative effects on girls and women, no matter how small the cut or what is or isn’t excised or stitched up. So making both male circumcision and FGM illegal serves to lump them together in a most unfair and disingenuous way.

The Brit Milah is an eternal covenant between G-d and the Jews. Now, G-d could have thought of other ways to make a covenant, I guess. If it has to be seared into the flesh, why not a piercing or a tattoo? I’m no Talmid Chochom or mystic, and I sure don’t know the mind of G-d, but it seems to me that the foreskin is accessible and expendable, but more, the penis represents the propagation of the Jewish people as well as the source of pleasure for Man. With great privilege comes great responsibility! How amazing is that, that the source of these two vital - literally, ‘vital’ pertaining to ‘vitum’, life force - functions has this little removable turtleneck! I know this won’t change the minds of the ‘intactivists’, but I think it’s no coincidence that it’s the removal of the foreskin, rather than, say, the tonsils or appendix, that binds the Jews to G-d the Creator (sorry, Muslims, Johnny-come-lately copycats) as an eternal reminder of the Chosenness of the Jews. Also, once it’s removed, it’s gone, and no comebacks (unless the job was done badly, which can happen, unfortunately, or unless you are deluded enough to want to grow back the foreskin by surgical means), not like piercings or tatts. No frivolity here.

So what about doing this procedure on a child who is unable to give legal consent? Whose parents, despite the fact that they take the baby for immunizations without consent, and force the child to go to school, and make a child eat broccoli, certainly without consent, and are thus in charge of the child’s welfare, both spiritual and physical- suddenly have no legal or moral authority to have their son circumcised. Suddenly, despite a 3,000 year tradition which has such enormous power and meaning, and no doubt has contributed to the continued existence of the Jews, is illegal. Suddenly The Rights Of The Child To Have An Intact And Perfect Body And Not Have Anything Done With Which He Cannot Consent, is sacrosanct. As a result of a ruling in a German court. I find this a little ironic on several levels.

It was the Jews, after all, who, under G-d’s command, abhorred Avodah Zara, idol worship, including the worship of Moloch, which involved mothers sacrificing their children by throwing them into the idol’s fiery maw and burning them alive. It was the Jews who came up with the whole idea of ‘Choosing Life’, and ‘He who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved the whole world’ and that ‘Man is a microcosm’ and ‘Man is created in the image of G-d.’ It sure wasn’t the Enlightened Germans who ran with that ball. But I digress.

Brit Milah may seem like a minor procedure performed on a minor, but it’s of major importance. And the Jews will find a way to continue the eternal covenant. We always have.

SUBURBAN ANGST

Behind the palings and the pickets, a wealth of suffering.

The Across-the-Back-Fence Neighbour’s Barking Dog.

It’s been 5 years now, I think, and not so bad in the winter, as the dog is kept inside more, I imagine. But come the summer, when the windows and doors are flung open to greet the fresh morning air. Or the cool evenings. Or the afternoon sun. Or a breeze at 10pm. Or any bloody time you can think of: The dog barks. A little Westy terrier with a yippy-yappy voice and endless stamina. We tried everything short of killing the dog and now we sulk in baleful silence. Except when I take out my megaphone and stand on my balcony and shout at them to shut the dog up. I am not making this up. It works, but I don’t do it too often, or else they will see me as the lunatic that I am. And every other neighbour I talk to is driven crazy by this dog. But everyone is too polite to say anything to the owner. So I look like a bigger looney.

Leaf blowers.

I mean, really, is there any more stupid invention? Back in the day, the homeowner/gardener would:

·      Rake up the leaves.

·      Place leaves in a bag and thence in the trash, or

·      Compost leaves or

·      Burn leaves.

I used to think that burning leaves was the worst thing, as it pollutes the air. I wasn’t the only one to think this because they made it illegal here. But really? It’s worse with the NOISE POLLUTION of the leaf blower. And the absurdity of blowing the leaves off one’s own property over to- where? The moon? No! To the next property! Or the street! And then what? The wind blows them back anyway! You idiot with your noisy little toy and your ear protectors and protective eyewear! Every Saturday and Sunday morning in autumn and well into winter (when there is hardly a leaf to be found), my two across-the road neighbours are in a duelling match. Or they tag-team each other. One blows the leaves off his lawn and nature strip onto the street and then the wind blows it back and then the other one takes over. What morons are these?! And we poor souls trying to have a quiet Shabbos morning have to listen to the endless RRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrr ad nauseam.

When they invent a leaf SUCKER, please let these fools know.

Possums and other Vermin.

I used to be an animal lover. OK, I still am, with the exception of:

• PIGEONS, or to give them their correct name, ‘Rattus con wingicus’. Yes, RATS with WINGS. Oh, I learned my lesson well with these critters.

Rule No 1: DO NOT FEED with leftover stale bread. They eat, the breed, they build nests which block up drainpipes so rainwater enters the house and courses down the wall onto the freshly laid floor. AND they poop everywhere. AND whatever bread they don’t eat gets eaten by-

• RATS. 

And there are several kinds of rats, including the Roof Rat which scampers around in your roof, gnawing on wires and fouling on any roof stuff like aircon units. And they also keep company with

• POSSUMS. Australian possums are not as vile as the US ones, they look a bit more like raccoons, for those who don’t know. So they are RATS with CUTE FACES. 

And they are nocturnal, so at dawn they come home- to my roofspace- to sleep and at dusk they get out there and boogie. They tend to tromp overhead rather than scamper; they can get as big as a large house cat. But they, along with the rats, can magically compress their furry bodies to slip in and out of minuscule holes in the roof, so that the tiniest shift of roof tiles will grant them access. And once they are there, using your roof and wall spaces as toilets and your wires and cables as teething toys, they are there to stay. Because as far as they are concerned, YOU are infringing on THEIR living space, not the other way around. Sure, there are many large trees for them to make their homes in as nature intended, but, hey! Let’s get in out of the rain!

You can trap them (but you can’t kill them; they are a PROTECTED SPECIES, what a joke! Protected! Like a panda! Except they destroy your garden, too. Even a panda would at least eat only the bamboo!) in humane cages, baited with an apple, and then you have to release them, so they can come back in. And you actually PAY people to do this for you, because they are vicious little beasts with fangs and claws. And then you pay the roofer to fix the roof. Again. And it’s quiet for a little while. Until the wind blows and shifts a tile and in they come again. (I know an old codger who used to trap them and drown them in a bucket. When he was told that they were protected, he claimed he was only teaching them how to swim, but they were poor learners. I used to be appalled but NOW I understand.)

If only I could get that damn dog to scare them away; at least the barking would be of some use.  But leaf blowers? Useless.