【国家地理百年纪念典藏】第53集 捍卫花园 #國家地理 #紀錄片 #探索

是Francis Bacon wrote God Almighty first planted a garden and indeed it is the purest of human pleasure 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 Backyard is a killing field it's a realm of stalkers Serial dealer Aerial combat Venom 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 The perfect rose of vegetable Voltaire once wrote or was it Martha Stewart We must cultivate our garden Well they're both wrong Pruning planting whacking your weeds 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 them all Now this may come as a surprise but I wasn't always this wise no 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 you how it happened In 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 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 amuck 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 weighed 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 There's a schedule I can 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 in their belly 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 shrew Blowing 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, first bite wins The shrew strikes for the neck His cobra-like venom starts to subdue the snake Muscles go slack, breathing slow 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 awe 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 is an acorn weevil A subversive devil 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 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 Is just a tired old myth I hope A terrible threat approaches At its own face The earwig nest Is about to be slimed Nothing even a caring mother can do A hungry thrush spots the snail Her next meal will be escargot Snail from its shell Delicately Then tenderized By pounding On a rock The footage you are about to see Contains scenes That may be disturbing to some viewers 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 In an efficient operation A quarter million ants That's one extended family Can get by on two meals a day Here's the appetite And now for the main course An ant attacks Fly 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 Tales I win, heads you lose Decapitation is the final insult Some say the world will end in fire ants But 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 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 luck They move faster Than Anne Mildred dealing blackjack Extreme wrestling on a tiny scape Time out while they play to the grandstand 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 knee No turf will change hands today And both scurry back to their homes I used to do battle in the garden myself The color 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 30-fold By a no-nonsense female 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 Not so far so good She lets him insert sperm by hand I mean by palp Part of the limb may snap To be left inside For this glorious moment He is ready to give an arm and a leg Now the female lays her eggs She secures over 200 of them in silky sack 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 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 him as I saw him When I saw him If I knew what they were called The trouble is Some of these pesky little critters Were neither fish nor fowl Like the daddy long legs of my ship They're familiar and strange At the same time But what are they? Think it's a spider? No Insect? No They're called epilions 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 That is one of nature's Lousier ideas Daddy long legs Has arrived for the hunt Make that mommy long legs 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 Well, 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 long legs' 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 long legs hobbles off But at least she's still alive And kicking In the middle of all the mayhem Beauty still flourished in my garden Where flowers grow, bees abound In a naughty little quid pro quo Bees handle the flower's 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 bee 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 I thought to myself If I could get rid of her I'd be able to get rid of the rest of the bees The bee, she was being watched By many eyes Eight, to be exact They all belonged to a jumping spider It never hurts to have eyes on 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 see 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 Like 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 lamps 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 If she makes a false move 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 80 miles left on her Earthworms as big as fire hoses Snatching up babes from strollers Wooly mammoths taking down a 7-Eleven Well, you will not be seeing Anything like that in this film But you will be seeing the hard, cold truth How about the garden? To me, my garden was filled with sneaky, willful creatures Who seemed to enjoy getting my dandruff up First of all, they didn't respect me So I didn't respect them Until I learned to pay attention Close attention That's harder to do than you think Some people can have their eyes wide open And see nothing Other people can have their eyes closed And watch reruns of Bonanza Well, that's not a problem I want to discuss right now Or you can have this eye closed This eye open Or you can have this eye closed And this eye open And either way, 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 And sure enough, she'd 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 12 point Through her straw-like 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 kind of oak tree That suits her Finicky, this little pest 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 But enjoy the harmony of our domain Especially the lucky few That had escaped my iron fist policy What a piece of work is a 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 gem-like eyes He spends over an hour every 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? Thank you The mantis has a single ear right in the middle of his belly Much like Aunt Melbourne It's tuned exactly to the bat channel The mantis hears the bat throws his legs forward Power down Narrow escape But not for long The bat is gaining She sounds louder than ever Desperate 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 market now, 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 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 8 million shrews in the naked garden This has been one of them It was my little shrew No need to suspect foul play Shrews run like mad for a couple of years I'd just keel over But the dearly departed Seem to be coming back to life Nope, still dead The burying beetles have come For them, the late shrew is the 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 Lying on their backs They walk the shrew forward I hope this doesn't catch on In my aerobics class Literally excited by the smell of death The pallbearers 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 rock 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 eggs 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 through 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 baby's attention And now she regurgitates To feed her young This is one A succulent shrew slurpee 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 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 OK, 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 gardener was trying to tell me something And at this point like the mantis I was all ear 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 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 look 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, 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 my garden 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 Oh, baby shrews Some of the smallest And most helpless of newborn mammals It would take nearly 5,000 of them To weigh a pound 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 every... Well, and of course You must share your garden That was a very good tomato Stay away from those trees