Misadventures in the Land of Fables #27

In the documentary ‘Bosch: The Garden of Dreams,’ Chinese artist Cai Quo Quian picks out a relatively innocuous detail in the surreal, polyamorous super-abundance of Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights.’ An image of animals drinking from a river or lake. He connects it with his own work, specifically the installation entitled ‘Heritage’ in which all the animals of the grasslands congregate around a waterhole, their heads bent over the water to drink.

These two scenes prompted me to think about the proximity of animals at a waterhole, the social friction this proximity might create and the idea of the development of community with its rules and manners. However, a closer look at the Quo Quian make me realise the flaw in this idea of community among animals. Here we found predators drinking alongside their prey, tigers and cheetahs just yards from zebra and antelope. Something was wrong. Surely this could not happen?

Both the Bosch and the Quo Quian were fantasies: Quo Quian presents a dream of peace and harmony, while the Bosch detail features unicorns and appears in the first panel of the triptych, likely a depiction of Eden. This is not always a dealbreaker for a genre (fable) in which animals routinely talk to and sometimes ally with their natural antagonists. But I was curious about why I had initially assumed this peaceful congregation actually occurred in the real world?

THE ATTRACTIONS OF A REASSURING IDEA

Somewhere along the line I had heard that animals would not attack each other at the waterhole and I believed it. Or accepted it. Where had I got this idea from? Turns out the source was probably Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book.’ Kipling imagines a truce at the waterhole and portrayed it as a law of the jungle: the mancub Mowgli is told that the animals suspend hostilities at the waterhole so that they might each tend to their thirst. It’s an attractive, optimistic idea: a vision of a rules-based order and a very English fantasy of respect and fair play, like a gentleman’s agreement.

Attractive, but not the way it goes down in real life.

I don’t know the frequency of attacks at the water’s edge, as animals go to drink, but we do know that predators migrate with the other animals to the waterholes. They need water, of course, as much as the next creature, but with so many animals in one place, the waterhole represents an opportunity for them. And it would not be the opportunity to adopt a diet of leaves or grasses.

COMPLACENCY CAN KILL

Slightly embarrassed by my credulity, I started to imagine a story in which an animal was, like me, persuaded of this truce. It would be a fable warning of the danger of the favouring an attractive theory over personal experience, of recourse to reason before instinct. And as a warning, it doesn’t turn out well.

The ostrich’s reassurance is, if you like, a riposte to ‘the Boy Who Cried Wolf.’ The ostrich minimizes a threat that should in fact be taken seriously. Complacency can kill.

The antelope again seemed like an appropriately worried protagonist. As for the complacent, reassuring promoter of theory, well, I drew upon another myth, that of the ostrich who supposedly puts their head in the ground in denial of unpleasant reality. (This isn’t true either: it was a misapprehension based on their practice of turning the eggs which they lay in shallow holes in the ground.)

You can read the new fable here: ‘The Truce at the Waterhole‘

Remember there are sharing buttons at the bottom of each fable. Please share. And you can comment on this blog below.