Daniel Addercouth
Beavers Will Save Paradise Fields
1
Oh Christ, not more bleeding Jocks. Bloody city’s full of them already.
2
You were happy to hunt us to extinction for our flesh and fur. Happy to deem us fish when it suited you. Now you decide you need us. A miracle cure, imported from north of the border. Well, stand aside. Let us clean up your mess.
3
Pretend that shopping trolley isn’t there. Imagine dams across the river. A series of pools, connected by channels. Wetlands glistening in the sun, sponging up rain. Excursioning school groups face-to-face with nature. Yes, Mathilda, those are reeds.
4
The city has always welcomed newcomers.
5
Who doesn’t love a keynote species? Nature’s architects, geoengineering the environment to suit their needs. (And ours, of course.) Consider the benefits:
(a) Provide a wide range of ecological services
(b) Limit environmental disasters cost-effectively
(c) Save McDonald’s from flash flooding.
6
Well, why not? Worked with them voles, didn’t it? Same body plan. Just a thousand times larger.
7
And then one evening as you lie in bed, you hear, beyond the sirens and the stereos, the gnawing of their teeth, which never stop growing. Building, building, building.
Inspired by the article “Will Beavers be eager for London life?” in the 1-2 July 2023 edition of the Financial Times.
Give Us a Billion Bitcoin or Humanity Is Doomed!
For my next book I’m going to write a thriller set in the Global Seed Vault in the Svalbard archipelago. International terrorists will take over the underground vault and demand a ransom from the United Nations, otherwise they’ll blow up the bunker with its millions of seeds. In this near-future, crops are failing around the world and the seed vault is humanity’s only hope as the back-up for all of agriculture. The terrorists have their own private island stocked with enough canned food to last a lifetime, of course. The seed vault doesn’t have permanent staff on the ground, but the charismatic director will be on site for the 25th anniversary of the opening. She’ll be assisted by a local teenage hacker who breaks into the vault’s security systems for fun. The director and the hacker will be chased around underground. Bullets will ricochet off concrete walls, boxes of seeds will be smashed, entire strains of Peruvian corn will be lost forever. The electricity supply will get cut off and the vault will begin to warm, threatening the viability of the seeds. In the denouement, the leader of the terrorists will let a polar bear into the vault to devour the director and her hacker accomplice. Except it’ll end up eating the terrorists instead, just as a fleet of UN helicopters turns up to save the day, showing that nature and international cooperation always triumph in the end. At the end, the director and the hacker will stand outside the vault watching the Arctic sunset, secure in the knowledge they’ve saved humanity. But the final scene will show drops of water falling from the vault’s tower as the ice melts. The warming will get us all in the end, seed vault or no seed vault.
Plausibility of Fact
Cranberry juice. Nice. Are you aware they
grow in marshes? I’m Alex, by the way.
Are you friends with the host? No? Me neither.
Excuse me, does this have onions in it?
I’m allergic. And are these gluten free?
You’re a doctor? Me, I fact-check poems.
I know, it sounds like an oxymoron.
But it’s a fun job. I’ve become a more
interesting guest, if nothing else.
It’s not my task to tinker with the poem.
I’m not there to catch the poet out.
I’m trying to save their blushes when they
confuse Fahrenheit and Celsius
or place a chiming clock in ancient Rome.
I know the weight of clouds and the types
of cherry trees you can find in Sweden.
I know how many fragments Sappho left.
And I can quote Homer to you at length.
If I find an error, I get in touch
and suggest that Wordsworth probably did not
skate on frozen Windermere as a kid.
Or explain that Cortez never set foot
in Darien. They must mean Balboa.
(I’m just making that one up. That was Keats.)
I don’t take pleasure in finding mistakes,
but I don’t trust anything these days.
Thanks, I’m OK for a drink. Go ahead.
Have you tried the pumpkin? It’s very good.
Did you know it’s related to nightshade?
Inspired by the New Yorker Poetry Podcast of 21 December 2016: “How Do You Fact Check a Poem?” (https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/poetry/how-do-you-fact-check-a-poem). With reference to ‘The Poet's Mistake’ by Erica McAlpine (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Daniel Addercouth grew up on a remote farm in the north of Scotland but now lives in Berlin, Germany. His work has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Roi Fainéant Press, among other places. You can find him on Twitter/X and Bluesky at @RuralUnease.
