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A warning from those
nice CITES people |
Northants News reports (01.04.08)…
A good friend of mine went to
Mexico recently. You are well aware that it is illegal to collect plants in that
country but never mind, it was an Opuntia and there were lots and he brought a
piece home.
Being an Opuntia it grew lustily
in his greenhouse and soon touched the roof. This Spring he was giving his
plants the first watering and noticed something strange about his opuntia; it
gave a sort of shiver all over. Yes, thought my friend, I must cut back on the
Agave juice. Then the plant gave another shiver. Really! And it was really
strange.
My friend was a great BCSS Forum
reader, he never contributed but now seemed the time to enquire about this
strange phenomenon.
Naturally there was a stream of
posts condemning his collection of habitat plants until Joe, the Moderator, read
the posting. You know Joe, he grows weird things, Mammillarias with numbers,
carnivorous plants and snakes and tortoises. And spiders.
In a flash Joe was on the phone
to my friend. Get out of there fast, take your family and cats (even the old
one) and put as much distance as you can between that greenhouse and you.
Breathless my friend was standing
in the road a few minutes later as three police cars, two fire-engines and an
ambulance, sirens blaring, screeched to a halt outside his house. A plastic
cordon was thrown around his property, one of those plastic strip ones with ‘Police,
do not cross’ printed on it a thousand times. Nearby neighbours were ushered
away to the local school and given sweet tea and cream cakes from the local
Mothers’ Union. Or was it Women’s Institute?
The emergency crews sat in their
vehicles, windows firmly up. A burly fireman in full protective gear walked over
and asked my friend if he was the owner of THE CACTUS. It was difficult to
understand what he was saying through the breathing apparatus. However he
accepted a cup of tea. And drank it through a straw. My friend said he had lots
of cacti and they were in the greenhouse at the end of the garden.
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Bird eating
tarantula on a dinner plate |
Dragging some heavy equipment
behind him the fireman took the path to the back garden. My friend had to be
restrained when the fireman took out his cigarette lighter and lit a
flame-thrower which he played back and forth over his entire cactus collection.
Soon the greenhouse was a buckled ruin and the cacti were smouldering ashes. ‘I
say’ said my friend, ‘I know I had a few mealy bugs and an illegal cactus
but that seemed a bit extreme’. At that point a government official came over;
my friend saw he had Ministry of Farms and Fishing on his donkey jacket.
Follow me the official said and
led my friend up the garden path.
"What the hell's going
on?" he says.
"Let me show you" says
the official. He went over to the opuntia and picked away a crusty bit; the
cactus was almost entirely hollow and filled with dead tiger striped bird-eating
tarantula spiders, each about the size of two hand spans. Apparently the parent
had laid eggs in the cactus years ago which had hatched and grown to full size.
When mature the cactus explodes and releases thousands of 15 inch tarantulas
which rapidly migrate, biting anything on their way. The bite is excruciatingly
painful but only fatal in old people, cats and babies. And birds of course.
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The area around was fumigated and
my friend and his neighbours were allowed to return to their homes three days
later. An ecological disaster had been averted and the only casualty was the old
cat who died of oldness a week later and hundreds of cacti which were my friend’s
pride and joy. And, of course those bird-eating tarantulas.
The moral of this story is never,
ever collect cacti in the wild.
Authorized by those nice CITES
people.