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Essays on the Main/If I Were the Boss…

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If I Were the Boss…

Forest Fires

Every spring, when the snow has melted away and last year’s grass dries, forest fires begin. The grass is set fire by the weak-minded, who are so many…

They set fire — for the sake of a pleasant smell of smoke…

Some of them also see other benefit in these criminal acts. For example — “we fertilize the soil with ashes”…

To one of them, I answered the question: “What do you think: what does chernozem consist of?”

It suddenly “came to him” that the soil is not made up of ashes, but of rotting during many years remnants of the same grass… Since that time, that man, in our subsequent occasional meetings, behaved politely underlined…

Should it come to everyone else!

In fires, not only grass burn away, from which the soil might turn out. But many animals are burned alive! Take at least spiders, in abundance building their spider-webs in this grass — in anticipation of appearance of mosquitoes and midges… And we would have some benefit, if they do not die…

… In arid summers, the special danger is represented by crown fires — when the crowns of trees light up. With a strong wind, the fire rushes through the forest at a tremendous speed. So much oxygen burns that people who are near, fall in coma… And how much animals and plants suffer and die in this fire!

The raging fire spreads to populated by people areas, villages are sometimes completely consumed in flurries of fire — along with people who have not managed to escape their homes to a safe location, along with domestic animals, with property accumulated by years of labor on the ground…

All this should be talked about with schoolchildren — then surely the number of fires would decrease… But to defeat dementia completely — by persuasion and penalty methods — I do not foresee the possibility…

And if so, then I propose to establish the following rule of forest exploitation: to divide the forests into quarters not by narrow cuttings through which the fire in a strong wind easily tosses, but by wide cuttings — about 50 meters. It would be convenient both for lumbering, and forest berries on such cuttings would appear: cranberries, blueberries, bilberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries — depending on the quality of soils. Both humans and animals would get benefit…

Floods

Every spring, floods inundate many villages along the banks of rivers. And sometimes strong and long rains are not only in springtime — and catastrophes of floods happen. People are dying, domestic animals, property. Wooden houses inside become covered with mold…

I repeat that this happens almost every year in approximately the same places.

But why not build once forever the protective dams — with the help of detachments of rescuers, soldiers, using civil and military machinery?

Do not build such dams along the river banks: let the flood meadows be fertilized with river silt! Dams must be built along the boundaries of settlements — taking into account the terrain.

Of what? From the construction debris, stones, bundles of logs, including those which have sunk during timber floating and raised from the bottom of the rivers. If possible, you can apply also concrete. All this let be covered with earth — gently, so that it would be easy to cross over. Then let plant grass, bushes, and trees. Their roots will strengthen the dams.

Elks

Long time ago, many elks lived in our forests. We met them almost every time, when we visited a forest.

And now the elks were gone: their bodies were eaten by human-predators.

But elks are the main food-source of mites, flies, midges, bloodsuckers called among people as “elk flies”.

The latter were abundant in old years. They showered in swarms from the trees, crawled in hair, climbed under clothes, bit sharply… Sometimes we had to run to escape from those parts of the forest where they were especially numerous.

And now — they are not at all! Or not every year it is possible to meet one or two. Now we can safely collect mushrooms and berries, merge with the harmony of the forest!

… Now there are talks in the press about the “fine perspective” of restoring the livestock of elks in the forests. And there are already released deer in forests, which will successfully replace the elks — as food for insects-bloodsuckers. The last will again be many-many!…

But do we need it?!

Predators

I do not understand people who — like now all the time is shown on Russian television — catch by hands crocodiles to move them to another pond!

What is the reason for this love for crocodiles? Would it be for all better, if this disgusting animal species disappear even completely from the surface of the Earth?

And I can say the same about love to lions, tigers, etc.

All such large predators are dangerous for humans and for many animals.

Scavenger-animals, eating corpses of other animals, yes, are useful.

About large predators is said that they kill old and sick individuals — and this is their supposed benefit. But this is not the case: they kill, first of all, cubs.

Why do some people love and protect large predators?

Is it because these persons themselves have predatory habits? When they contemplate the images of how, for example, a lion tears with teeth the body of a living victim, do they align with the lion and enjoy together with it the infliction of terrible pain? “Super! — How we are tearing it!”

Enjoying by someone’s pain…

But would not it be more appropriate to attune with the tormented victim? Then, perhaps, these predators-people would understand what is pain, would begin to learn compassion?

Then, probably, wars will become less…