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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-03-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1996 PAGE 5. Odd things, animals Odd things, animals. Particularly the human one. Look at us. We can't fly like eagles or swim like dolphins. We can't climb like mountain goats, run like cheetahs or jump like kangaroos. Pound for pound, porpoises have bigger brains. Bears are fiercer, rabbits are nimbler, and your average sewer rat is a helluva lot tougher. But we blithely assume ourselves to be the superior species. Exactly why is that? My Grade 10 biology teacher used to tell us that the human animal is superior because it is the only animal that knows how to use tools. I wish I knew where my Grade 10 biology teacher was these days. I'd like to call her up and say "Bunk". I spent yesterday afternoon watching two sea otters bobbing in the surf off Stanley Park. They were floating on their backs, balancing a couple of flat rocks on their tummies. They were using those rocks to break open clams. They looked like they were at their own private cocktail party, gossiping over the chip dip. If I turned my back on the otters and looked up, I could watch seagulls spiraling overhead. They were picking up mussels from the beach, flying over the parking lot and dropping them on the pavement to smash them open. I grant you, flat rocks and parking lots aren't exactly Skil saws and electron microscopes — but they are tools, by anyone's definition. Not easy being a leader The news of Prime Minister Chretien manhandling a heckler in Hull led me to the conclusion that it was not only Mr. Chretien who was having problems. Just about every leader in the western world could be excused for not wanting to get out of bed these days. This comes at a time when a few years ago it was generally believed that all would be clear sailing to the end of the century. Communism had fallen flat on its five-year plans, Saddam Hussein had gotten his come- uppance and leaders could now get down to the business of making life easier for everybody. Were that this was so! An easy political life is something that not one of them can claim to enjoy. Voters are in a cantankerous mood and are not prepared to appreciate anything that politicians do for them, preferring to concentrate on the things that have not been done. Having enjoyed for years all the benefits of deficit financing, the same voters are reaching for their handbooks on tarring and feathering whenever a government realizes that all this living on the never-never must come to an end and presents the same taxpayers with the bill. How Chrdtien, Kohl, Clinton, Major and all must long for the day when there was only the Kremlin to worry about. Let's take Helmut Kohl for openers. He has an economy that is anything but vibrant. By German standards unemployment is high Not that my discovery was anything new. Chimpanzees have been photographed using sticks to fish termites out of termite mounds. Egyptian vultures have been documented dropping rocks on ostrich eggs to make their own omelets. Now, from Down Under comes word of even more sophisticated tool use — by crows. Scientists from the island of New Caledonia, off the cast coast of Australia, have been watching the island crows take tool use one step further. Unlike the chimps, the vultures, the otters and the seagulls, they don't just use whatever's lying around, they actually adapt it to their own purposes. One thing they do is bite off tree twigs that have secondary branches growing out of them. This forms a 'hook' which the crows then use to snag grubs and maggots out of holes. The other tool they fashion is even more lethal. The crows take leaves from a tree called the screw-pine and nibble them lengthwise to create a tapered shaft about eight inches long. Screw-pine leaves are naturally barbed. By the time the 'craftscrow' is finished, he's got a multi-fanged gaff that's very efficient at rooting out worms, spiders, millipedes and all manner of creepy-crawlies hiding in the crevices of logs and tree trunks. And that's just what the crows do. They grasp their 'tools' in their beaks and poke and prod until they catch their dinner. Doesn't surprise me. Anyone who's watched crows for any length of time knows that they're smarter than your average government bureaucrat. Or Chihuahua, come to that. When I was a kid, my Dad brought home By Raymond Canon in the western sector while the former communist East Germany is still trying to get on a par with the rest of the country in spite of massive subsidies that would have staggered most other countries. Kohl also has to try to sell his voters on the merits of a single currency for the European Common Market. Given the strength of the German mark over the past 25 years the same voters are extremely reluctant to even consider the matter. German labour costs are the most expensive in the industrialized west; the social welfare net is too expensive for the country to carry while relations with France, the traditional post-war close friend, are not what they should be. Helmut Kohl is constantly wondering if his political magic will be effective this time around. John Major, prime minister of Britain, would like to have Kohl's troubles. For one thing he does not even enjoy the German chancellor's popularity. Every step he takes fails to find favour with the voters, which might not be so bad if he did not have only a razor-thin majority in the House of Commons. Some of his Conservative MPs are not above crossing the floor of the House while the future of Northern Ireland drags on and on to the point where the IRA has decided it has had enough and has resorted to its program of violence. Major is ambivalent about the role of Britain within the European Common Market and his hesitancy does not give any leadership to the British at a time when they do not know whether to opt for the single currency or rest faithful to the pound. With a resurgent Labour Party John Major may lose an orphan crow one day. We named him Sammy. My Dad was obsessed with teaching Sammy tricks. Sammy didn't seem all that keen. Not that he was stupid. He just had better things to do with his time. One trick my Dad tried to teach him was "fetch the quarter". My Dad would pitch a quarter out in the grass and, birds being attracted to shiny objects, Sammy would go after it. Sammy found the quarter every time. Getting him to give it back was something else again. My Dad tried cherries. He would hold up a cherry and say "Here, Sammy! Nice cherry! Give me a the quarter for a nice cherry!" Sammy the crow looked at him like he was out of his mind. My Dad was not a patient man. After an hour or so of pleading, he'd pack up his bag of cherries and go in the house. Not me. I wanted that quarter. Enough to follow Sammy for hours if necessary, waiting for him to get tired of lugging the quarter around. Besides, I knew Sammy really liked strawberries. All I had to do was get close enough to him with a strawberry or two and he'd drop the quarter straight off. Of course sometimes he'd fly half a mile over swamp and hills and burr patches. Other times he'd perch on the uppermost branch of a maple tree and make me climb about three stories high before he'd drop the quarter and gobble the strawberry. And I'd swear sometimes I'd see something like a smirk cross his, err, beak. Sammy knew how to use a tool, I should know. I was it. the next election by a resounding landslide. Jacques Chirac of France has to come to grips with the exorbitant cost of the social welfare programs which France is trying to carry; in addition he has come to the conclusion that his civil servants are being paid too much and, as I have indicated before, he is in somewhat the same pickle as Mike Harris. When Chirac presented his reform policies, he was greeted by a public strike that lasted the better part of a month and was, in its level of intensity, far worse than anything that OPSEU could ever do. The French, as Mr. Chirac knows, are not pikers when it comes to putting on public displays of disapproval. The Italian prime minister, whoever he may be (and it changes constantly) always has trouble since people go to almost any lengths to avoid paying their full share of taxes. In addition, it is obvious that the governments of the past have been too generous when it comes to handing out social welfare benefits. All this has resulted in a national debt that is far worse than Canada's. Almost every time that a prime minister tries to come to grips with this debt, there is a government crisis and somebody else has to make an attempt to form another government. I won't even go into what Boris Yeltsin has in the way of problems in Russia; it is too gory to contemplate. Needless to say he must envy any of the western leaders mentioned above and their problems. So much for the peace dividend! The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Can't judge a book... Part of my job with this newspaper, albeit, thankfully, a relatively small part, is covering court. What I have discovered over the course of the years is that this can be an enlightening experience. There are the obvious reasons, for example the opportunity to come into contact with a wide assortment of individuals. But, there are also many surprises to be had and lessons to be learned, both legal and moral. Falling back on an old axiom, "never judge a book by its cover," is one of the first exercises in this class to dumbfound you. While there are of course, the true stereotypes of the good guy, bad guy, present to validate any preconceived notions you might have about the way the criminals and lawyers should look, or how the police officers and judges will act, there is always at least one individual who will astound you. This past session was no exception. To explain, let's first discuss the words, "Not guilty". While this would suggest a total lack of culpability regarding an incident, in a courtroom it is as likely to mean, that though you might be guilty, you'd just as soon not admit it. After all, there's always the chance you'll get off and then you won't have to accept responsibility for your actions. In my days of covering court, I have seen some of the best-dressed finest examples of society, people you would be inclined to look up to in any other situation, hide behind a not guilty plea. I'm not saying that in their shoes, I wouldn't do the same; after all, self- preservation is a tangible human instinct. But in a rather ironic spin this past week, I lost a great deal of respect for the straw grabbers after one young man's appearance. His long hair tied back, he came into the courtroom dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his hands cuffed. He epitomized the careless renegade, whose disregard for what's right and wrong was equalled only by his disrespect for the establishment of such morals. And yet, as he stood before the judge, he stated, in an articulate and deferential manner, that he was guilty of all charges, even going so far as to ask that blame be removed from a peer implicated in one of the incidents. Some might argue that as this fellow's extensive record showed, he is no stranger to jail, and quite simply was not bothered by the idea of such a punishment. However, he earned my respect in that courtroom, for whatever that's worth. To accept responsibility for your misdoings and bare the punishment is a virtue I have espoused many times. It's difficult to admire anyone who has shown time and again that he is bound for trouble. Yet, is it any less reprehensible to commit a wrong and try to convince yourself and others that it never happened? It would certainly be easier if we could loot at the good guys and the bad guys and know the difference. But there are undoubtedly times when that denim clad, long-hair can harbour a trait of honour, while the suit next to him covers an arrogant despot. When this young man first entered the courtroom, I was indifferent to him; I'd certainly seen his type before. But after listening to him, though he's certainly not "Mr. Model Citizen" he had gotten my attention. There is more to believing than seeing. Arthur Black International Scene