Sir Francis Bacon wrote,
God Almighty first planted a garden,
and indeed it is
the purest of human pleasures.
"Cultivators of the earth,"
according to Thomas Jefferson,
are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous,
the most independent,
the most virtuous.
Or, as my aunt Mildred said,
Never throw meat in the compost pile.
Hi, I'm Leslie Nielsen.
Welcome to my garden.
I'm sure it's a lot like yours
cool, serene, completely under control.
Time to wake up and smell the roses.
The backyard is a killing field.
It's a realm of stalkers...
serial killers...
aerial combat...
venom...
death.
So, if you're looking
for peace and quiet...
stay away from the...
savage garden.
A garden is a little slice of nature
where you get to call the shots.
You see: A raked lawn.
A well-skimmed lily pond.
Perfect rows of vegetables.
Voltaire once wrote,
or was it Martha Stewart?
We must cultivate our garden.
Well, they're both wrong.
Pruning, planting,
whacking your weeds?
It's all beside the point!
Because the place cannot be controlled
So give it up!
Ask not what you
can do for your garden.
Ask what your garden can do for you.
Because with the right approach,
your backyard can expand your mind.
But you need the
right tool for the job.
A famous gardener once said,
I like to watch.
Because when you're "gardening,"
you're too busy to see anything.
And you're missing
all the strange and wonderful
wildness of a place
that's close to home.
And I don't mean the mall.
Now this may come as a surprise,
but I wasn't always this wise.
But I came face-to-face
with the naked garden
and I was forced to open my eyes.
What I discovered wasn't always pretty
but it was always fascinating.
Let me tell how it happened.
It began about a year ago.
I felt like a
pretty observant fellow then.
I ran a tight ship.
Yeah, I thought I was in charge.
Still, the vegetable
patch held to its own pace...
always about a month
behind my appetite!
Every day, until my tomatoes were ripe
I'd be there, watchful and proud.
I felt like a maestro,
and the vegetables were my orchestra.
And we made beautiful
gazpacho together.
I never suspected that even among
my precious tomatoes,
a trespasser ran amok.
It was a shrew.
This ravenous pipsqueak needs to eat
his weight in food every day.
For his size, he's one of the fiercest
predators in the world.
But a year ago,
I didn't even know he existed.
My mind was in the mulch.
I was too busy
savoring the fruits of my labor.
I don't like to brag,
but I thought I knew my onions.
Now all the while, this little fellow
he weighs no more than a wet tea bag
had the run of the place.
Like it or not, shrews are among the
garden's most common mammals.
They love to dig around for worms
and beetles, spiders, snails.
They work day and night,
hunting one hour,
then napping the next.
That's a schedule I could settle into.
Shrews operate at such a furious pace
that just missing a meal
could kill them.
When they're on the go,
they really live life in the fast lane.
Under stress, their hearts beat
up to 1, 300 times a minute
like mine during my last audit.
It's safe to say that no perfume maker
has ever been inspired by a shrew.
Glands on their bellies
put out a musky smell.
Only a predator with a
strong stomach will take one on.
The garter snake is
tough enough for the job.
He's one of the backyard's
great hunters
at home in the water
as well as on land.
He tastes the air with his tongue
and picks up a whiff of a shrew.
Following the trail,
the snake closes in.
His weapon: a steel-trap jaw.
A fight is coming, but my little
shrew is no babe in the woods.
Predicting a winner might be hard.
The snake has no venom,
but his quarry does.
The short-tailed shrew is the only
North American mammal
with a poisonous bite,
except for my Aunt Mildred.
In this fight, the first bite wins.
The shrew strikes for the neck.
His cobralike venom quickly starts to
subdue the snake.
Muscles go slack, breathing slows.
Paralysis would soon set in
if the shrew weren't so hungry.
The snake has been vanquished
by the one creature in my yard
there is no taming of.
What a place my garden was!
I'd reached for the suburbs
and ended up in the Serengeti!
Something awful seemed
to stir in every crevice.
This beetle is emerging
after three years underground.
She's an acorn weevil
a subversive devil about
the size of a grain of rice.
I felt like her goal in life
was to wreck my oak trees.
As soon as she dries off her wings
for her maiden flight,
off she'll go... gunning for my acorns.
But I didn't know
any of this back then.
I had other fish to fry,
like keeping my daisies from drooping.
Of course, now I know...
I didn't even have control
of my own flower patch.
Just below me,
an earwig was laying her eggs.
This forbidding insect seems
to have had a charisma bypass.
But don't sell her short.
The female cleans each egg to
protect it from deadly fungus.
Otherwise she might lose
the entire nest to athlete's egg.
Earwigs like to hang out in warm,
dark spaces.
But that bit about hiding
in people's ears?
Just a tired, old myth.
I hope.
A terrible threat approaches...
at its own pace.
The earwig nest is about to be slimed.
There's nothing a
caring mother can do.
A hungry thrush spots the snail.
Her next meal will be escargot.
Remove the snail
from its shell... delicately.
Then tenderize by pounding on a rock.
The footage you are about
to see contains scenes
that may be disturbing
to some viewers.
Now if you can't stand the heat,
get out of the garden!
Speaking of the heat,
I'd like you to meet a fire ant.
These South American invaders
work in huge colonies.
They run an efficient operation.
A quarter-million ants
that's one extended family,
can get by on two meals a day.
Here's the appetizer.
And now for the main course.
An ant attacks.
The dragonfly shakes a leg.
Reinforcements are quick to arrive.
The dragonfly makes a desperate move.
It's too late.
Again and again,
the dragonfly is stung
with a caustic venom.
It's death by a thousand fiery jabs.
And I thought paparazzi were bad!
Piece by piece,
the ants dismantle their captive,
like a scene out of Gulliver's Travels
Make that Reservoir Dogs.
For the ants,
it's Tails I win... heads, you lose.
Decapitation is the final insult.
Some say the world
will end in fire ants.
For the dragonfly, it just did.
I thought the garden was mine,
but in fact, creatures
had claimed it all!
My yard was divided into warring camps!
Each shrew controls its own patch.
And being some of nature's crankiest
creatures, shrews do not like to share.
My little shrew's neighbor is sleeping
just over the scent marked border
that defines their territories.
But while these little fellows have
a great sense of smell,
they have poor vision and can
sometimes bump right into each other.
It's usually a nasty surprise for both.
The winner of this battle may gain
the other's territory.
The loser may end up as lunch.
They move faster
than Aunt Mildred dealing blackjack.
It's extreme wrestling on a tiny scale
Time out while they play
to the grandstands.
Now back to the action.
No one knows if shrews
are immune to their own venom.
But if they're not,
they really shouldn't be doing this.
A battle can last over half an hour,
but my little shrew settles this
one quickly with a well-placed nip.
No turf will change hands today.
And both scurry back to their homes.
I used to do
battle in the garden myself.
I felt it was my territory,
and I had to defend it.
Sure I had big weapons.
But I was starting to
worry about the little things.
Something was bothering me.
I couldn't put my finger on it.
Lucky for me.
Black widows were living in my shed.
The male is outweighed
He approaches,
tapping carefully to woo her
and to avoid her lethal bite.
If we could understand
his vibes of love, it would go like,
Please baby, please baby,
please don't kill me!
So far, so good.
She lets him insert sperm by hand.
I mean, by palp.
Part of the limb may snap off
to be left inside.
Ah love, For this glorious moment,
he's ready to give an arm and a leg.
Now the female lays her eggs.
She secures over
Not one to put all
her eggs in one basket,
she'll eventually spin about five.
In only two weeks,
a thousand new spiderlings
will invade my yard.
Black widows may have
colonized my shed...
but I was more worried
about what was going on outside.
I was prepared to fight the good fight
with chemical warfare.
As I was saying,
I had no idea the enemy
was living in my armory.
It was bad enough outside.
My stems were being sucked!
My leaves lacerated!
My petals perforated!
It was more than a man could bear!
Who could blame me
if I practiced tough love?
Smells like... victory.
But I was no winner.
My insecticide, long expired,
had all the kick of a Shirley Temple:
And just as well, because the mantis
loves to munch on the munchers
I was trying to murder.
The way things were going,
I didn't have a prayer
of taming the savage garden.
I used to call 'em as I saw 'em.
When I saw 'em, if I knew
what they were called.
Trouble is, some of these
pesky little critters
were neither fish nor fowl.
Like the daddy-longlegs in my shed.
They're familiar and strange
at the same time.
But what are they?
Think it's a spider?
No.
Insect?
No.
They're called Opiliones
from the Latin meaning "aphid sucker."
Yeah!
Aphids are perfect suckers, really,
when it comes to my rose stems.
And a lot more than one is born
every minute at least in my backyard.
In fact, aphids can reproduce
without having sex!
There's one of nature's lousier ideas.
Daddy-longlegs
has arrived for the hunt!
Make that mommy-longlegs.
She has legs up to here!
Each is slender as a thread
and works partly by hydraulics.
She even hears, tastes,
and smells using her legs.
Reminds me of... never mind.
I now know there's a lot
to admire in this creature.
She has pretty good manners.
She chews her food before eating it,
granted, outside her mouth.
She sucks up the juices
through a flexible tube.
She also flosses after every meal.
I prefer unwaxed mint, myself.
Why are daddy-longlegs' legs long?
To keep their plump bodies
high above predators.
If that's not enough,
two legs put out a nasty smell
to discourage hunters.
But trust me:
If you can smell them,
you're too close.
The smelly legs also
have built-in seismographs.
And she's keeping her legs peeled
for approaching enemies.
Like the tiger beetle.
A killing machine.
An orthodontist's nightmare.
The beetle attacks
and grabs a leg.
It's a tug-of-war.
And then built for quick release
the leg pops off.
Special muscles close off the stump.
The tiger beetle, no genius,
hangs on to its prize.
The daddy-longlegs hobbles off.
But at least she's still alive
and kicking.
In the middle of all the mayhem,
beauty still flourished in my garden.
I never could train my vines
Where flowers grow, bees abound.
In a naughty little quid pro quo,
bees handle the flowers' sex life
in exchange for a drizzle of nectar.
The life of a worker bee is measured
in distance not days.
It's like a
frequent-flyer program in reverse:
fly 500 miles, and then you die.
Now, I've been in a "B" movie or two,
so I used to think I had a
way with these critters.
But then came the fateful moment
when I realized that all of the
garden was not under my spell.
One day a bee came up to me
and stopped to pay her respects.
But this cheeky bug
was testing the boundaries.
It was a small infraction,
but it threw me.
If she could question authority,
what else was going
on in my little Eden?
Well, plenty.
I'd only seen
the tip of the iceberg... lettuce.
No creature was safe,
not even the little upstart of a bee.
She was being watched by many eyes.
Eight to be exact.
They all belong to a jumping spider.
It never hurts to have eyes in the
back of your head...
even if they're only good
for seeing movement.
To see what is moving,
the spider must turn to face her prey.
She's caught sight of the bee.
Two large front eyes track the prey.
She can't move her eyes as we do.
But she can swing her retinas back
and forth inside her head.
It's like holding your eyes still
and then trying to look around
by moving your brain.
Don't try this at home!
There: you can see the eyes lighten
and darken as the spider looks around.
Being among the smartest of spiders,
she doesn't head straight for her prey.
Instead, she approaches deviously.
She's an accomplished stalker.
Like a slasher film victim,
the bee is unaware of danger.
Good luck for the spider:
the bee flies even closer.
The spider creeps up.
The spider is now within range.
Meanwhile, the bee laps up nectar
with her remarkable tongue.
It's long and hairy,
like mine the morning
after a guacamole festival.
The spider must judge
the bee's exact distance.
Just one false move
and the spider will suffer a sting,
lose her meal... and perhaps her life.
The spider definitely
got the jump on the bee.
Poor bee: she had a good
Earthworms as big as fire hoses.
Bald eagles snatching up
babies from strollers.
Woolly mammoths
taking down a Seven Eleven.
Well, you will not be seeing
anything like that in this film.
But you will be seeing the hard cold
truth about the garden.
To me, my garden was
filled with sneaky,
willful creatures that seemed to enjoy
getting my dandruff up.
And worst of all,
they didn't respect me.
So I didn't respect them until
I learned to pay attention...
close attention.
Now that's harder to do than you think
Now some people can have their eyes
wide open and see nothing.
Other people can have their eyes
closed and watch reruns of Bonanza,
but that's not a problem
I want to discuss right now.
Or you can have this eye closed
and this eye open.
Or you can have this eye closed
and this eye open.
And either way it gets you... nowhere.
As I was saying, respect your garden.
Watch it closely.
I wish I had learned
these lessons sooner myself.
At the time, some lessons were too
elevated for me to learn.
Even above my garden,
trouble was brewing.
The acorn weevil was back.
Sure enough, she found my oak tree.
She's looking for a good meal.
And when it comes to acorns,
she knows the drill.
What a "schnoz"!
It's longer than her body
and tipped with tiny jaws.
Reminds me of my first agent.
After a three-year fast,
she's eating my acorns.
Kind of like my second agent.
There goes the next generation
of oak trees, I mean.
Her little jaws are smaller
than a printed period.
Helvetica twelve point.
Through her strawlike proboscis,
she sucks up liquid fat from the acorn.
It's a perfect diet for a weevil,
but don't even think about it
if you're on Jenny Craig.
Next she'll lay her egg inside,
but only if this is the one kind
of oak tree that suits her.
Finicky, this little pest.
Ah, evening was coming.
A heron approached my pond.
Don't even think about fishing here!
Sometimes even the darker side
had a gentleness about it
unless you're a slug.
Dusk was the time for creatures
large and small to rest
and enjoy the harmony of our domain.
Especially the lucky few
that had escaped my iron-fist policy.
What a piece of work is man-tis!
One of the so-called "good" insects,
he excels at inactivity:
he spends two-thirds
of his time motionless
much like my third agent.
Still, he's an alert animal,
with two big goggle eyes
and three extra gemlike eyes.
He spends over an hour a day grooming
every part of his spiny body.
Why?
Because he can.
This evening, my garden was about to
disappoint me as it never had before.
I heard a strange new sound.
It was a hungry bat,
and she was about to
shatter my peace of mind.
The mantis takes flight
at just the wrong time.
The bat hunts with a kind of sonar.
From her nose, she
beams a high-pitched sound.
Listening to the echoes tells
her the position, speed,
and direction of the mantis.
Some sanctuary!
It was Top Gun in my own backyard.
Where's Tom Cruise
when you really need him?
The mantis has a single ear
right in the middle of his belly,
much like Aunt Mildred.
It's tuned exactly to the bat channel.
The mantis hears the bat
throws his legs forward... power dive!
Narrow escape.
But not for long.
The bat is gaining.
She sounds louder than ever.
Desperately, the mantis flies
straight into the ground.
I cheered for the underdog.
The mantis escaped again!
All right!
But there's no deus
in this machina, buddy.
Death and destruction everywhere.
I'd set out to build a paradise,
and here, I had a
ringside seat at Armageddon.
I thought this was my darkest hour.
But that was yet to come.
At night.
After the sun went down,
some of my backyard's most unsavory
creatures appeared.
To find them, all you have to do is
follow your nose to the herb patch.
There are eight million
shrews in the naked garden.
This had been one of them.
It was my little shrew.
No need to suspect foul play.
Shrews run like mad for a couple
of years and just keel over.
But the dearly departed seemed
to be coming back to life!
Nope, still dead.
The burying beetles have come.
For them, the late shrew is a windfall
It will be food and more.
But hungry competitors are all about,
like other beetles,
maggots, and raccoons.
It isn't first come,
first serve in the savage garden.
So to secure their prize,
the beetles conduct a kind of funeral.
Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.
Lying on their backs,
they walk the shrew forward.
I hope this doesn't catch
on in my aerobic class.
Literally excited
by the smell of death,
the pall-bearers take time out to mate
Couldn't they find a roach motel?
The beetles drag the shrew
several feet to an abandoned burrow.
And just in time.
Because the maggots are frisky tonight
They're turning a dead mouse
into an area rug.
The burying beetles are settling
into their underground home.
And it's not from the pages
of House and Garden.
It's more like Morticians' Monthly.
The beetles now have a major
home improvement project.
Call it "This old shrew."
The carcass will be converted
into a nursery, an edible nursery.
As at better funeral homes,
the body is shaved.
Next, to seal in freshness,
the beetles embalm
the shrew with secretions.
My shrew, may he rest in peace,
is finally prepared.
The female will soon
lay her egg near his remains.
Just above, raccoons patrol the garden
After a few pull-ups
and a cool drink of water,
they search for food.
The grass is definitely
greener on the other side.
An earthworm tries to escape
from the raccoon by burrowing.
Poor choice.
But, as Charles Darwin wrote
of the worm's mental abilities,
There is little to be said.
A mole, cousin of the shrew,
eats the earthworm by squeezing
it out like a tube of toothpaste.
I think I'll stick to baking soda.
Of all the things Aunt Mildred
brought with her from Europe,
why did she have to bring a mole?
I'll never forgive her.
The mole barrels thru her tunnels
with catcher's-mitt paws.
But when she comes up to an obstacle,
she won't be stopped.
Now she's poking my parsnips.
I hate when that happens.
I'd had enough trouble
in the herb garden.
My whole idea of the backyard
was decomposing,
much like my poor little shrew.
I wanted to forget
about the gruesome burial,
but just one week later,
I paid an accidental
visit to the grave.
What a change had taken place!
Babies!
The morgue had become
a daycare center!
Burying beetles have hatched
and scrambled on top of the shrew.
And here the young beetles live
like so many chicks in a nest.
They even beg for food!
Mom's on her way.
First she'll eat what's
left of the shrew.
Looks like Aunt Mildred's
shepherd's pie.
Next she calls to
get her babies' attention.
And now she regurgitates
to feed her young.
She offers one
a succulent shrew slurpy!
And I thought I had a rough childhood.
Burying beetles make some of the
best parents of any insect.
That's not saying much:
the mother will happily eat some of
her young if the dead shrew
is too small to support the brood.
Home sweet home.
As the shrew dwindles,
the grubs grow fat.
In a way, burying beetles
practice reincarnation... con carne.
High up in my oak tree,
an acorn has gone bad.
The tree senses the damage
and can cut its losses.
By now, I was expecting
something weird and wonderful.
Okay, just plain weird.
Inside, the old acorn weevil's baby
has grown up
and eaten itself out of house and home
Good riddance!
The grub can feel the
impact with the ground.
That's the signal to move on.
But it's no easy matter
to get out of an acorn.
The young weevil more or less
has to perform its own C-section.
It's already cutting an escape hatch.
But it can take three days to get out!
How do you get out of a hole
the size of your head?
It sure helps to be a living accordion
Portrait of the Michelin
man as a young grub.
The young weevil must now hide itself.
But a hungry shrew is nearby.
The grub will start to dig underground
where it will metamorphose
and wait perhaps years
before emerging to continue
its seemingly pointless cycle of life.
On the other hand,
look how we're spending our time.
The shrew is intent on finding grub.
I mean, a grub.
Hiding and sneaking,
amputation and slaughter.
I was beginning to think my garden
was trying to tell me something.
And at this point,
like the mantis, I was all ear.
Heh, heh.
I was off-balance, confused.
And I was about to come
face-to-face with a force so...
vital... so unstoppable...
I could never look at my
garden the same way again.
Shrews!
A female seems to be accepting
a male's overtures.
Is she so hot a shrew
as she's reported? Humph.
I had no idea I was listening
to a love song.
But the young couple was actually off
to a good start for
what can be a taxing business.
Mating is as hectic as the
rest of the shrew's life...
often 20 times a day.
Your mileage may vary.
What a sight!
They looked so... vulnerable.
I was amazed
that two shrews - two recluses
could put aside their grouchiness.
Suddenly, I realized I had been
obsessed with the
darker forces of nature
with savagery and death.
True enough, for the male shrew,
even love can be a drag.
But now I saw my garden's other side.
It was really about love
and life and renewal.
Mostly, it was about copulation.
My garden wasn't the scene of
an apocalypse after all;
it was more like... genesis.
The wonder. The wonder. The wonder.
What I discovered is that there
was a problem in my garden.
And I was the problem.
I was spending so much time trying
to control the garden that
I wasn't seeing things
that were right in front of my eyes.
Look down here.
A female shrew's been nesting.
Let's see how she's doing.
Ah, baby shrews.
Some of the smallest and most
helpless of newborn mammals.
It would take nearly
But they'll sure grow fast.
They'll leave the nest in three weeks.
A couple of weeks later,
they'll be looking
for mates themselves.
It's a beautiful thing.
Don't worry.
I'm not going New Age on you.
But I couldn't help feeling that
one of them was smiling at me.
You know, I have a way
with the garden's creatures.
So here is my advice about the garden.
Give up the slightest idea
that you can control it.
Leave yourself open to delight.
Keep your eyes open.
And enjoy the wonderful
flavors that you'll have... Ohh!
Well, and of course,
you must share your garden!
That was a very good tomato.
Stay away from those trees!