Cockroaches, rats, flies and mosquitoes are known as the four pests. They carry viruses, and the growth of their numbers is difficult to control, causing serious life problems for humans and other organisms, so everyone wants to get rid of them quickly. But few people have noticed that the name "four pests" is not what they have always held.
In the 1950s, the four pests did not include cockroaches, but were replaced by the current national protected animal "sparrow". At that time, most people thought that sparrows ate food and had a large number, so it was a "major harm" to the people. Therefore, after the state issued the instruction of "eliminating the four evils", the people of the whole country mobilized in unison, from the elderly to the toddlers, all rushing to get rid of the sparrows.
Ordinary people use their brains to find ways. So half a day to annihilate more than 500, a day to eliminate 1,000 small, and even seven days to harvest 200,000 records of endless.
Birds have wings and fly in the sky, so what method does everyone use to eliminate sparrows? What is the outcome of this battle to "destroy the four evils"? Is there no sparrow grain saved? Why did the sparrow change from a role that everyone shouted and beat to a protected animal on the mainland?
Sichuan carried the banner of "first head"
The above instructions have come down, and the first to produce the effect is Sichuan. Sichuan has rich terrain, lush vegetation of dense mountains and rivers, and naturally many birds. Under the guidance of the local government, the children took up the slingshot, the adults picked up the shotgun, and the old man arranged the trap for catching the birds, but the effect was very small for a few days, the slingshot was difficult to hit the target, and the bullets were more sparrows, and the trap was time-consuming and laborious to catch. In March of the same year, the Sichuan "Four Pests Eradication Headquarters" got a good method from Mu Qingyun, a farmer in Pi County: "Sparrows can fly" is their advantage and disadvantage. When we fly again, we always have to find a place to stay, and we can't control the things in the sky, but we can control the things underground. If you let them have nowhere to rest, keep flying, fly exhausted, won't they fall down and fall to their deaths?
So the people of Pi County were organized, took the guys, the fields, the front of the house and the back of the house, the sound of knocking was incessant, the sparrows were just about to land and were scared away, but this village could not stay and flew to other villages, and there were only a few scattered ones that fell to their deaths throughout the day.
So the organizers began to reflect: "The method is effective but the scope is too small, we must make the sparrow stop without stopping, falling without falling, and eating without food." Then he organized a "battlefield" in neighboring counties.
This time, the masses were more numerous, the scope was wider, the pots and pans were all dispatched, and the sound of "banging and banging..." from sunrise to sunset resounded throughout the county, and the sparrows were frightened by this formation, even if they dared to fall down to eat grain, they had to fly around the mountains and fields, and many tired people fell to the ground without moving. The experiment proved the leader's vision, "The larger the scale, the more effective it is." ”
This method was popularized, and different counties or villages also optimized the method, not only shouting, banging, but also planting hundreds of thousands of straw people in the fields, lighting more than 100,000 fires in vacant places, setting up hundreds of thousands of bird traps, and sparrow corpses everywhere they went.
In Qionglai County, even the task of killing sparrows was calculated according to the number of heads. For the sake of this "number one enemy" of the people, factories have stopped work and production, students have suspended classes and schools, and government organs and units have closed their businesses and taken holidays. All the personnel were busy from dawn until late at night, and everyone was so tired that they did not listen to the call, but the results proved that there was a reward for the effort, and the county eliminated more than 200,000 sparrows this week.
Effective methods are implemented nationwide
Such an effective method was made into a documentary by Emeishan Film Studio, and once it was broadcast, Sichuan Province was used as a benchmark for eliminating the four evils, and Beijing, as the capital of China, naturally did not want to show weakness, and on April 19, all students, teachers, cadres of government organs, and scientific research staff all took to the streets and vigorously began to hunt and kill sparrows. The "fatigue tactics" of throwing poisonous bait to lure sparrows, ambush shooting, and beating gongs and drums showed their magic to the masses of the city. More than 400,000 sparrows were wiped out in four days.
This "large-scale combat method" has also spread more and more widely, and all parts of the country have begun to follow suit.
However, while the whole people participated in the eradication of sparrows, there were also some voices of opposition. For example, Zhu Xie of the Institute of Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he and some scientists believe that although the sparrow eats grain grain, but this only accounts for a small part, most of the time they eat pests, if the sparrow is going to destroy the balance of the biological chain, it is likely to occur insect plague, then the loss is not the small amount of grain that is eaten by the sparrow. To support this view more strongly he also gave the example of the Prussian state, which in 1744 king Frederick the Great mobilized the whole people to eliminate sparrows, and soon after the country suffered a serious insect infestation, in order to avoid more and longer loss of food crops, and had to import sparrows from abroad to control pests. However, scientists are only a small number of scientists, and most of them blindly go up and down.
Saving food is counterproductive
However, the laws of nature also worked quickly, and in the spring of 1959, insect pests swept through most of China's cities, and people heard the voices of scientists crying out for the sparrow. In 1960, sparrows were officially removed from the "Four Pests". But the great famine of 59, 60, and 61 devastated China.
In the memories of many post-80s, an indispensable entertainment project in childhood is to pick up bird eggs on the tree, at that time the sparrow is not a protective animal, but it is not lacking, it helps the crops to remove pests, but also asks for a few grains to fill the hunger, the two live in harmony.
With the development and progress of science and technology, people's exploration of nature has become more in-depth. The development of human society inevitably reduces the habitat of wild animals, and the topic of protecting natural homes has been paid attention to by human beings, so it is very necessary to avoid human harm to wild animals with national laws!