|
Silvio Camilleri (see facing page) has evidently never watched The Muppet Show. Otherwise, as this classic illustration amply shows, he would have known what thousands of five-year-olds the world over already know.
Eagles have eyebrows.
However, I’m not at all sure whether Attorney Generals have eyes. Yes, yes, I know justice is supposed to be blind, and all that. But the reason I question Camilleri’s faculty of vision has nothing to do with aquiline superciliousness. It is his objection to the “hypothetical” cases I alluded to in my article last week.
Erm… how can I put this gently? Those cases are not actually hypothetical at all. Like eagles’ eyebrows and cuckoo’s nests, they exist. I am not at liberty to go into too much detail – any more detail and I might let slip that I actually did some research, shocking as the thought may appear. But the Attorney General can howl his disapproval from the hilltops, denounce my shoddy journalism from the pulpit, and swoop down like a browless buzzard on any of the inaccuracies in my article (of which one, the date, was a rather obvious slip: instead of writing the date of the ruling, I inadvertently took down the date on which I wrote the article)… but none of this will change the fact that I was referring to real instances involving real people, with only one or two minor modifications to disguise identities and circumstances.
Naturally, this does not mean that all these ongoing investigations will actually result in prosecutions. But if they do… boy, oh boy. I mean, think about for a second. Aren’t you curious to see how the Attorney General will handle these cases, after having already dismissed the scenarios in question as “incongruous”, “misconceived” and… what else? Oh, just read the article on the facing page for yourselves.
Hang on, it’s just occurred to me. This is all by the bye. For the Attorney General has just publicly assured us all that no case resembling my “flawed” scenarios will ever come to trial. Well, I will be holding him to that promise. In fact, Dr Camilleri can rest assured from now on, my eagle eyes will be glued to all future cases of money laundering brought before the Maltese courts. And if there is even the ghost of a resemblance between any future money laundering case, and the scenarios described in my article last week…
But of course, there won’t be. How can there be, now that the AG has made it so abundantly clear that my entire take on money laundering was mistaken?
While I’m on the subject of birds and their body parts… Recently, I encountered a couple of hunters who - after mistaking me for a passing Scop’s owl and pumping me full of lead pellets - tried to convince me that there really is a case for spring hunting in Malta.
I hasten to add that both these hunters are what you would call the traditional types. They do not shoot out of season; they do not shoot protected species (only joking about the owl); and they certainly do not go out hunting on boats (which, by the way, is about as “traditional” as fishing for lampuki from a plane). So, satisfied that I was in the presence of the Real McCoy, I thought I’d actually hear them out for a change.
The way it was explained to me (or rather, the way I understood it) was this. Apparently, there is a huge difference between autumn and spring turtledove migration. The former is something of a nonchalant affair. The latter, on the other hand, has a certain indefinable air of urgency about it.
The reasons are simple. In autumn, turtledove are leisurely making their way south for the winter (as you do, if you’re a bird). The factors prompting them to commence this southward journey are chiefly climactic: as Europe cools down ahead of winter, turtledoves figure out that the longer they hang around, the more uncomfortable life will become, and the greater the chance that they might actually freeze to death at night. But the onset of winter is not uniform throughout Europe: some parts get cold sooner than others, and not always at the exact same time. So when the birds finally come to their individual conclusions that a quick trip to Africa might not be a bad idea, they do so separately, one by one… not in their millions, but in dribs and drabs.
And they’re not in any hurry, either. They’ve got all the time in the world, and for this reason they don’t always take the quickest route (which, at least in the central Mediterranean migration route, would bring them directly over Malta). Sometimes they take roundabout diversions, swinging past Lampedusa or Pantalleria to drop in on a few long lost feathered friends.
The return journey? That’s a different story altogether. On the way back to Europe, the turtledoves are in something of a rush. Not because they have pressing work appointments back home, or because their visa might expire while still half way over the Sahara… but because they are PREGNANT. (Well, the females are, at any rate. On the subject of males, many birds – not too sure about turtledove, I must admit – are unlike most Maltese males in that they are naturally monogamous. This means that ducks, swans, etc., will choose only one partner, and stick together till death do them apart… which, unfortunately, tends to happen quite a lot here.)
Anyway: I’ve never been pregnant myself, but I am told that it can often be a stressful affair. Now just imagine how stressful it would be if you also had to fly several thousand miles between the time of impregnation and actually giving birth. I would imagine time suddenly becomes a rather important factor. The birds might linger, but their pregnancy will not. And unlike humans, they cannot just mistake their offspring for the garbage, and dump it in a shoebox somewhere on the street. They need to NEST.
So, unlike the sprinklings of autumn, spring mass migration tends to involve large numbers of frantic birds flying directly to their destination, usually by the shortest possible route. This is why there is an element of truth to hunters’ claims that autumn numbers are conspicuously less than those in spring. And this is also why, according to my hunting informants, autumn migration is so far superior to its spring equivalent.
OK, so far I think I can see their point. But for one tiny detail. Actually, two:
One: If the turtledoves are desperately trying to reach Europe in time to lay their eggs, then I would have thought that the act of brutally decimating them before they succeed is a good deal more reprehensible than if they were just milling around with nothing better to do… as is the case in autumn, when, surprise! It’s actually OK to shoot them.
Two: If you argue that it’s perfectly fine to shoot turtledove in spring because they are more numerous than in autumn (for all the reasons outlined above)… then surely that argument would hold, not just for turtledove and quail in Malta, but for all birds, and indeed all beasts, in all countries everywhere. If sudden abundance could be considered any justification for spring hunting, then why just here? After all, spring in Europe is proverbially associated with the sudden spectacular return of the swallow… as well as the swift and the stork, the badger and the bear (which comes out of hibernation at roughly the same time), not to mention the beaver, the bullfrog, the bittern and the bunny-rabbit, just to complete the animal alliteration.
So really and truly, what we should be arguing for is not a “special exception” for little Malta, but a movement to legalise spring hunting… all over the world.
I’ll leave it to you to work out what kind of a planet we’ll be living in if this had to actually come to pass. But then again, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Let’s face it: we are, after all, living in one of the very few countries to have traditionally always permitted hunting in spring. The result? Look around you. The barn owl, the jackdaw, the kestrel, the peregrine falcon… all these birds used to breed here. None of them do anymore. Any idea why?
Don’t all speak at once, I can’t make out what you’re saying… |
