The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (28 page)

BOOK: The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons
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This is a human-created problem, and nature is not responsible; it is irrelevant that ducks frequently hybridize when placed in unnatural circumstances. Is the problem insurmountable? I have no idea, but I do recognize that White-headed Ducks are now important beyond themselves, as a flagship species for conservation efforts. I also saw the interactions between Ruddy and White-headed ducks as a near-perfect example of the unforeseen and perhaps unforeseeable consequences of introduced species.

T
HERE ARE TIMES WHEN I THINK
that God is giving Himself a good laugh by making me run around in circles. His latest circle was going to take me to the vanishingly small village of Peakirk, north of Peterborough in central England. Five months after I left Britain,
I found out that Sir Peter Scott had, half a century earlier, set up a waterfowl centre in Peakirk, and had managed to convince a publican to change the name of his pub from The Black Bull to The Ruddy Duck. I had done everything else I could possibly think of associated with the Ruddy Duck; surely I had to drink a pint at the pub that bore its name.

Regrettably, my next opportunity came more than a year later, a week before Christmas, and a day after what locals described as the worst winter storm to hit the British Isles since the invention of weather. Three centimetres of snow, a bit of slush, fog, and temperatures about ten degrees below normal … the kind of thing that brings Europeans to their knees. Lisa and I were travelling together and managed to convince John and Joyce Chaperon to join us. John and Joyce are my only remaining relatives in the UK, although I am not exactly sure what our relationship is. We are second cousins or something like that.

Despite the predictions of frustration, calamity, and imminent demise by the BBC’s morning news, Lisa and I caught the train north to Peterborough from Kings Cross, and John and Joyce came across from Leicester. From the train station we caught a cab to Peakirk and plonked ourselves down for lunch at The Ruddy Duck Free House & Dining Rooms.

I am not the sort to arrive unannounced, elbow my way up to the bar, and ask a bunch of foolish questions. What would my mother say? I had, instead, written to the owners of The Ruddy Duck two months in advance telling them about my quest and proposing a date on which they might take a minute or two to speak to me. They had ignored me. Or perhaps my letter had become lost in the post. They had probably just ignored me.

When John and I found our way to the bar to order lunch, Sue Ruddy did not immediately make me love her.

“Are you a senior citizen?” she asked. “We have a seniors’ menu.”

I wanted to say, “No, I’m bloody well not. Sod off!” but felt this might be an unwise opening salvo. Instead I said, “No, I’m
Canadian. We all look like this.” After a thoroughly enjoyable lunch of roast lamb, mixed grill, lasagna, trifle, crème brûlée, roast apples, and cheesecake, washed down with wine and beer, Sue spoke with me about her establishment.

Andy and Sue Ruddy had moved to Peakirk to manage The Ruddy Duck in June of 2003, and when the owners were ready to sell up a year later they gave them first refusal. Given their surname, it seemed as though fate was involved. Sue explained that the pub side of the establishment had formerly been a row of four two-storey seventeenth-century cottages, but these had been knocked together at some point in the past. Despite being a listed building, recognized for its special historical significance, it wasn’t clear exactly when the cottages had become a pub. The restaurant side of the establishment had been added later.

“Have you ever seen a live Ruddy Duck?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think I have.”

I explained that they were beautiful birds in the flesh, and that the antics of a male in search of a mate were quite charming. I then asked if she knew about the controversy surrounding the Ruddy Duck in Britain. She said that she had heard that they were “naughty ducks, and not well-liked.” I expanded on the story, telling her about the difficulties with White-headed Ducks in Spain.

She pulled a framed document down from the wall. It was a typed sheet of paper that had been created “On the Occasion of the Opening of the ‘Ruddy Duck’ on 30 October 1964.” It consisted of a long list of alternative names for the Ruddy Duck, taken from a book about waterfowl by F. H. Kortright, and may have been presented to the pub by Sir Peter himself. Among the names listed were Buck-Ruddy, Chuck Duck, Greaser, Shot Pouch, Biddy, Hard Head, Spike-tail, Stub-and-Twist, Wiretail, Creek Coot, Dip-tail Diver, and Bumblebee Buzzer. Given the amorous successes of the Ruddy Duck in Spain, my favourite name on the list was Stiffy.

Sue explained that Peakirk’s waterfowl centre had closed down eight or nine years earlier and had since become overgrown. While we waited for a taxi to take us back to Peterborough, Lisa, Joyce,
John, and I strolled toward the site. A couple of Mallards flew overhead. Ruddy Ducks were nowhere to be seen. I suspect that soon there won’t be Ruddy Ducks anywhere in Europe.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
If You Have Snails, Blame the Romans

REASON NUMBER ELEVEN FOR INTRODUCING A FOREIGN SPECIES: BECAUSE THEY TASTED SO GOOD BACK HOME.

I
T WAS AUGUST OF 55
b
CE,
and Julius Caesar found himself a long way from home. Three years earlier he had been appointed governor and military commander of the province of Gaul, and had spent the time enlarging the Roman empire to include major chunks of western Europe. And so, instead of soaking up the Mediterranean sun with his wife at his side and a glass of fine wine in his hand, he found himself on the dreary eastern side of the English Channel, staring across at the White Cliffs of Dover. Great Britain sat there, just waiting to be conquered.

Caesar could think of at least three good reasons to run roughshod over the island. He knew of Britain’s substantial mining operations, particularly rich in tin and copper. Then there was talk of abundant corn crops, which would help to feed his hungry troops. Finally, Caesar was getting damned ticked off at Britain as a source of fierce Celtic warriors who sailed across to the mainland to help in ongoing resistance to the Roman occupation. And so, with about 10,000 soldiers, Caesar sailed northwest with mischief in his heart.
The operation immediately started to go wrong. When Caesar’s ships sailed up to the cliffs at Dover, they found them lined with angry British warriors spoiling for a fight. When Caesar sailed the few kilometres north to the pebbled beaches near Deal, his troops encountered a large British force equipped with horse-drawn war chariots, something that Caesar’s army was notably lacking. But the Romans persisted and managed a foothold. When Caesar’s cavalry tried to cross the channel to reinforce the foot troops a few days later, they were driven back to Gaul by bad weather. That same storm damaged many of Caesar’s ships on the British beach, and so the whole crew beat a sane and strategic retreat.

Caesar was back in July of the following year with even more men, more horses, and a full picnic lunch. Their landing was unopposed; seeing the size of the invading army, the British retreated inland with Caesar hot on their heels. Mighty battles raged while another summer storm bashed the Roman ships. The British tribes proved unexpectedly resilient and news came to Caesar of troubles needing his attention back in Gaul. And so in September, with Britain thoroughly unconquered, Caesar and his legions turned around and buggered off back to the mainland. He would have to wait ten years, six months before being named Dictator Perpetuus of the Roman empire, and ten years, seven months before being stabbed to death by sixty of his closest friends.

The world continued to spin around the sun. But the Romans hadn’t entirely forgotten about Britain. Details are a little sketchy, but it seems that, as Emperor of Rome, Gaius Caligula marched his troops to the English Channel in 39 CE and had them attack the seas and collect seashells as evidence of his victory over the god Neptune. Some see this as evidence of Caligula’s madness. Others claim that the seashells story is a result of a mistranslation, and that Caligula either had his troops collect small boats or dismissed his men to indulge in the offerings of local brothels. Ancient languages are a devil to translate properly. Unlike Caesar, after his aborted attempt to subdue the British, Caligula had to wait only two years before being stabbed to death by his chums.

But in 43 CE, at the order of Emperor Claudius and under the command of General Aulus Platius, Roman troops came storming back, crossed the English Channel, set up shop at Richborough, and settled in for a good long stay. When the Romans left Britain for good, nearly four centuries later, they left behind a peculiar little life form they had introduced from Gaul.

I
N THE LATE
1990s, plans for a housing estate a few kilometres from Ashford in Kent required a survey to make certain that the bulldozers weren’t going to rip up anything important. A group of archaeologists found the remains of a previously undocumented Roman town. Probably not the ritziest of villages in the Roman empire, it was still a substantial settlement, covering roughly the same area as six Olympic-sized swimming pools. By the time news of the rediscovered Roman town hit the press, archaeologists had recovered 3,000 artifacts. Most of these were the typical roof-tiles-and-cooking-pots sort of thing, but among the artifacts was a living, breathing population of edible snails. They are common in France and known variously in Britain as Roman snails, Burgundy snails, and apple snails. Not considered the very best of candidates to beat the record for swimming across the English Channel, it seems a lot more likely that the snails were brought to Britain by the occupying Romans. The Romans had long since left, but 1,600 years later the snails remained. Unlike the Romans, the snails hadn’t any notion of expanding their empire, and so they persist in just a few locations on the chalk-rich soils of southeast England, and if you know where to look you can see them to this day. I knew where to look and was off to find them.

While conducting earlier research on Labrador Ducks, I had become friends with a British vandal named Errol Fuller. To my delight, Errol had agreed to join me for the first wave of my Roman adventure. Living in Tunbridge Wells, not so far from the chalky downs of Kent, he told me that if I could get from Gatwick Airport to his local train station, he would pick me up, catch me up, and join me in my snail quest the next morning. The trouble was that
Errol never quite got the hang of doing nothing, or even doing one thing at a time, and so he had double-booked himself. As well as being due to pick me up at the train station, Errol was due to make a presentation on Dodos to a natural history society in Cambridge. In his place, Errol had arranged for his lovely girlfriend, Cath Wallis, to pick me up and entertain me until he got back.

Cath and I set off for a country pub, The Spotted Dog, which had apparently been a rather rough place in its day. The rough edges had long since been polished, and we found the car park occupied by only the most genteel automobiles. Most of the patrons sported dinner jackets and posh jumpers. A roast dinner for two was on offer for £43, but that didn’t seem to include drinks, so Cath and I settled for white wine and bitter ale instead. We sat at a table overlooking a small, quiet, wooded valley and talked about life.

I
NTEREST IN ROMAN SNAILS
does not end at the tables of snooty restaurants. Research papers on the species appear in scholarly journals at a rate of about fifty per year. Most of these fall into one of two categories. Neurologists are interested in the properties of nerves of Roman snails, and biochemists are keen on the chemicals that these molluscs produce; some may have commercial or medical applications. Most of these publications are pretty opaque, but the Roman snail paper with the most tortured title must be “Solidphase synthesis of a pentavalent GaINAc-containing glyocopeptide (Tn antigen) representing the nephropathy-associated IgA hinge region.”

As a bird biologist by training, I had absolutely no idea how tricky it might be to find snails, or to distinguish one type of snail from another. I had purchased a guide to snails of the British Isles, which described Roman snails,
Helix pomatia,
as “creamy-white, very opaque, usually with a few faint, broad, pale brown spiral bands,” which seemed to me to describe 85 percent of the British public. The guide went on to describe the shell as having “coarse growth lines, but no wrinkles. Adult shells usually more than 35 millimetres wide.” I was after the biggest snail species in the British Isles.
The guide explained that although it is an introduced species, the Roman snail is both rare and protected because it is collected for food; they apparently have a subtle, slightly grassy taste. The guide also explained that my snail was confined to just a few calcareous districts in the south of England. Luckily, Jan Light, president of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, had given me precise map coordinates of Roman snail sightings.

Even though Errol had arrived home from Cambridge very late the previous evening, he was willing to make an early start of it. And so, equipped with maps provided by the good people at the British Ordnance Survey, the three of us piled into Errol’s Nissan Tino and set off. The car was well adorned with items whose immediate function was not apparent. Put more simply, the vehicle was full of rubbish. I shovelled myself a spot to sit in.

Out of Tunbridge Wells, we took the A21 north and the M25 west toward London. At the A226b turnoff we headed north through the villages of Cheatingham and Wrecksley. A left and two rights brought us to an unsigned car park. We had arrived at Broad-shield Downs, one of the best spots in Britain to look for Roman snails.

We set off along a trail between oak woodlands and cultivated fields, poking and peeking into the trail-side shrubbery every few steps, each keen to be the first to see a really big snail. It was cool and breezy as the morning tried to decide between low cloud and high fog. This seemed like perfect weather for snails, if not for Romans. As we wandered, Errol claimed that, as a child, he and his father had come across gigantic snails at Marley Hill, Knebworth. Looking them up later in a book, Errol’s father had concluded that they must have been Roman snails.

BOOK: The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons
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