人鼠斗 (附《梅花泪》)
My anticipation grew as flowering loquat tree started bearing little green loquats. Entering its third year of fruiting, the tree is like a blooming lady in her best time, healthy , productive and fruitful. I dreamed of the harvest days, when clusters of yellow fruit hang heavily from the tree, from which I pick one after another the mellow juicy loquats that are rarely found on the market.
But the dream was swirled to a nightmare overnight, when one morning I saw a few hollow shells of unripen green loquats scattering under the tree, the young soft seeds inside missing. Who did this? My suspicion that it must be a rat was soon proved right, as one night at my opening the porch light and the backyard door, a rat scurried away in the darkness.
When my pesticide request submitted to our HOA got unanswered, I had to act on my own. I climbed up the ladder and wrapped up the fruit as much as I can with paper bags, plastic bags or bag nets, leaving those high above or out of reach alone. For a while, though the remains of green loquats were still seen around, I thought to myself that at least those bagged or netted ones should be safe and mine.
I was proved wrong this time. As the loquats were turning yellow, one morning standing by the second-floor window, I suddenly noticed that quite a few clusters of netted ripening fruit were alarmingly gone. Upon a closer scrutiny of the nets taken down from the tree, I found bigger holes in the net gnawed by the rat.
Desperately I resorted to Home Depot for a solution. I visited it thrice within a week. But the products that promise to be very effective failed to do the job. The rat adeptly nibbled away the bait under the trap without being caught. It ate up the food on the glue trap without being glued or leaving a footprint. I don’t know if the products are obsoletely designed, or if the rat evolves to outwit us humans now. And with the meagre loquats left on the tree, I was undoubtedly defeated in the battle.
下面这些照片是上星期天(4/18)拍的。春天已经渐行渐远。
附最近唱的《梅花泪》