Today, mouldywarp came home with us: a real first, this. We found this perfect little velvety creature, plump but perished, upside-down on the path which leads down from the dunes this morning and – instead of leaving him to the crows – we brought him home to give him the burial he deserves. Around here – as in most country areas – mouldywarp is considered a proper pest, and there are numerous specialists who have dedicated their lives to eradicating the little diggers from the farmers’ land. In all the grassland we visit, mole activity is extensive and persistent: there must be thousands of them round here. But we love them wholeheartedly, for their individuality, beauty and resilience and, of course, those seriously majestic hands.
This little chap was unmarked, so perhaps he had had a heart attack. We found him lying on his back, his strong feet outstretched, as though he had been knocked backwards by shock, but he may have had a fight with another, if their tunnel territories overlapped – if, in other words, he’d run into an unwelcome stranger. If so, it was a bloodless encounter but one from which he had come out worse. In his teeth was a blade of grass; was this his last mouthful on earth? If so, it was an ironic one for this ‘revisionist of all things green’, as Wyatt Prunty puts it in his wonderful poem.
We brought him home carefully carried in a fresh yellow pooh bag, then bedecked his own little grave with what flowers we could find: bright pink hydrangeas and the last of the cream roses by the pond, which illuminated him like a light bulb in the brilliant morning sun. With a prayer we placed him near the other special creatures at the bottom of the garden: the seagull youngster who fell from the roof and little Hammy Jo amongst them, Uncle Johnny overseeing everything in his benign, all-seeing way.
These days, moleskin means either a kind of cotton fabric or an expensive type of notebook, but in the old days when it was fashionable Kemo Sabe’s forebears would sometimes have worked with the real thing. Thank heavens those days are past! We have returned our fossorial friend to the darkness he knows and prefers. We ask the Great Spirit to accept his tiny soul, which in its last day on earth gave us all such special joy. Wyatt Prunty’s poem, which we love, captures so well so much about this beautiful little mammal, and you can read it in full here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/mole
mr pip ponders 