The weather has been so unsavoury and unpredictable over the last few weeks that my thoughts haven’t been on the garden, apart from watching the birds decimate the last of the berries on my ‘Kiftsgate’ rose and the local cats sticking their tongues to the pond, both of which were just mildly entertaining to be honest. Really the priority has been to catch up on some work on the computer, making sure that the fridge is fully stocked and that the house is toasty warm. Keeping our home warm is pretty easy these days, as it just means flicking a switch on the gas boiler. Although I am getting worried about what our bill will be like when it arrives and cursing the fact that I hadn’t the foresight to invest in Bord Gais shares in the autumn.
Heating homes has been an issue for everyone this year and our neighbours in Europe have had the same problems as we have had. But one country in particular has come up with a novel way of heating homes.
The Swedes have been burning rabbits.
Now we all know that Sweden is famous for Abba, large blue and yellow furniture stores, boxy cars and peace prizes, not necessarily in that order mind, but this little fact about bunnies came as a bit of a surprise. Ok, just to clarify things, it’s not as if you can go into your local shop and buy a bag of coal, some firelighters and a bale of rabbits bound together briquette-like with a strong piece of orange strapping. These rabbits have come from the parks in Stockholm where they have become a bit of a nuisance.
Over the past number of years many of the parks have been plagued by rabbits, which have been happily munching their way through the plants that try to grow there. Any of you who have had a few rabbits in your garden know only too well the damage they can wreak in a night of foraging, so you can imagine that the groundskeepers were not entirely happy providing breakfast, lunch and dinner for an army of bunnies. The ‘wild’ rabbit population in the parks has been exacerbated by people who had bought a pet rabbit, got bored with it and let it out to play with its cousins in the local park, and then ran like hell.
Something had to be done, so for the past number of years Stockholm has organised a cull of the rabbits in a bid to reduce the population because, as we all know, if you have one male rabbit and one female rabbit you soon end up with…well, you do the maths. This of course created the problem of what to do with thousands of rabbit carcasses and although I can personally attest to the fact that they make a fine pie, this must not have been to the taste of the locals. Then one enterprising person thought up the idea of burning them as a biofuel. So now they freeze them, transport them to a large bioenergy incinerator and ‘convert’ them to heat for people’s houses.
Now just in case you think its just rabbits that are being picked on I should also add that they burn other animals that for one reason or another can’t be used as foodstuff too.
Now I know many of you will think of this as cruel, but having thought about it for a while it seems to me a better use that going to landfill. If the rabbits are a problem, which evidentially they are, and they are being culled anyway, which is also the case, then is this not the best solution to the problem? If it were rats I was talking about would you even think twice about it? Or perhaps my compassion gland, or whatever it is, is no longer functioning after years of abuse.
It does of course raise other questions, such as whether the energy used to cull, freeze, transport and then burn the creatures is more than what they produce but that’s a question for another time. And it’s for the Swedes to worry about, not me or you.
Maybe we are all too squeamish about the whole thing? Perhaps we should recycle more animals and pets in this way? In years to come, along with our other recycle bins and basket for glass we’ll have a container for the goldfish, those mice that you caught in the traps last week and, dare I say it, the pet moggy?
Now don’t shoot the messenger. I’m not saying I’m for the idea, I’m just putting the thought out there, just so you won’t be shocked if it happens. After all, I’m sure the whole world laughed at the first person that came up with the idea of recycling mobile phones.
Anyway, next summer if you’re in a park in Sweden and you see all the nice flowers and shrubs growing and flourishing there, think about the bunnies and what became of them.
To be honest, I’ll still be thinking about the rabbit pie. I’ll send you the recipe if you like?
No comments:
Post a Comment