The giant in the clearing is an earthworm. Pleshakov Anatolyevich - a giant in a clearing or the first lessons of environmental ethics

From the book "The Giant in the Clearing" "Respect the life of the earthworm" He is known to everyone, both adults and children. But few people are seriously interested in his life, hidden from us. Ordinary earthworms most often come across to people after rain, when they appear in large numbers on the surface of the soil. That's why they call them raindrops. Worms do not voluntarily leave underground minks. Rainwater drives them out. But at night, especially in warm weather, the worms come to the surface of their own free will. True, they do not quite get out, but only protrude, clinging to the walls of the mink with the rear end of the body, in order to quickly hide back in case of danger. Stretching out of the mink, the earthworm scours the ground around and grabs with its mouth damp rotting leaves, half-rotted blades of grass ... It drags all this into its hole and swallows it. Moving in the soil, he swallows it. That's the kind of food he has. You will probably think that it is very tasteless. But there's nothing you can do about it, that's what nature has decreed. The earthworm is supposed to eat what other animals cannot eat. An earthworm is a harmless and almost defenseless creature. But in nature it is irreplaceable. If there are many earthworms in the soil, it is in good condition. These creatures are great soil workers. They make it more fertile, passing through the remains of plants and soil lumps. And in the passages of earthworms, the air necessary for the respiration of plant roots is “stored”. The great scientist Charles Darwin, who specifically studied the life of earthworms, compared them to a caring gardener who prepares the best land for plants. Some schoolchildren, not really knowing anything about earthworms, sometimes step on them on purpose, but this should never be done. On the contrary, it is better to help the unlucky worm, move it from the road to a safe place. There was such a case. The sixth graders were digging a vegetable garden and dug up some earthworms. Some guys began to cut them with shovels. The teacher stopped them. She asked to feel sorry for the worms and spoke about their role in the soil. The guys thought. It turns out that they considered worms harmful, they thought that they eat the roots of plants. And they were very surprised when they found out that this was not at all the case, that they had completely different food. If you are digging in the ground and you see an earthworm, you don't need to deliberately cut it with a shovel. There is a living being in front of you. Like all other living creatures, it deserves respect. And also a special thanks for working so tirelessly to improve our feed soil.

SAVE CANCER

Somehow, at the very end of May, seventh-grader Yasha brought crayfish in a transparent bag to Alexander Ivanovich, a biology teacher. There were five, two males and three females. Rachikhas were with eggs.
Yasha wanted to please the teacher, because crayfish can be boiled and eaten. That's what he suggested he do, but he was thinking about something completely different.
Alexander Ivanovich questioned the student and, to his great chagrin, found out: the guys catch crayfish in the spring in a small river and take them out of their holes with their hands; a lot of crayfish are caught, the number of those caught is measured in tens per person; guys always take females with caviar.
The teacher asked: “Don’t you think that with such fishing, not a single crayfish will soon remain in the river?” To this Yasha did not answer, only shrugged his shoulders.
Alexander Ivanovich poured water into a liter jar and put the unfortunate crayfish in it. They were alive, as they were, although without water, but in a wet bag. Once in their native element, the long-whiskered creatures perked up, but it was noticeable that they still felt bad. Wasting no time, the teacher took them to the very river where they were caught. He was in a hurry, afraid that the crayfish would suffocate in a cramped jar. Once at home, the five sufferers slowly, as if still not believing in their miraculous salvation, crawled away to a deep place and disappeared. And the teacher decided tomorrow at the lesson to tell the children about the life of crayfish. Maybe, he thought, after learning more about these amazing animals, the guys will treat them differently. They will take pity on them, stop destroying them in such numbers.
And here is what Alexander Ivanovich said at the lesson:
- Take a closer look at what an unusual appearance a crayfish has: its chest merges with its head, it has two clearly visible eyes and a long mustache. And he has ten legs. The front ones are pincers, and with the help of the rest, he walks.
With claws, cancer grabs food and defends itself from enemies. Its food is aquatic plants and various aquatic animals, both living and dead: crayfish is omnivorous. During the day, he hides under stones, snags or in his mink. At night, it travels along the bottom in search of prey. However, sometimes crayfish look for food during the day, without waiting for the night.
When the breeding time comes, the rachikha attaches reddish eggs to its abdomen from below and wears them until a small crustacean appears from each. These crumbs at first hang on mom. Then they venture on short sorties, but at the slightest danger they hide, as if in a house, under the parent's belly. Soon the children will part with their caring mother and will live on their own. Unfortunately, not everyone will grow into large crayfish, because life in the reservoir is harsh, they have many enemies, and most of the crayfish offspring will die.
“Crayfish live,” the teacher continued, “in rivers and lakes with clean water. And where the water is polluted, they disappear, they cannot stand the pollution. One more trouble is added to this: every year children and adults catch them. And they catch sometimes, not knowing any measure. What's this? Greed, indifference to the living, irresponsibility? Probably all together.
And how we need these wonderful creatures in our lakes and rivers. After all, they are the orderlies of reservoirs. It is crayfish that purify the water by eating all kinds of leftovers at the bottom. For example, the time has come for some fish to die, and crayfish eat it dead. But it's not only that. Isn't it nice for us just to realize that somewhere in the water such unusual, beautiful, amazing animals live? Don't they beautify our nature?
Dear guys, be kinder, take care of the crayfish. Don't catch too many of them. Do not fish in the spring, during breeding season. Never take crayfish females with eggs, because from each egg a small crustacean will appear - the future big cancer. And it's best not to catch crayfish at all. People will live without boiled crayfish, and our reservoirs will feel noticeably worse without them. And so already in many places crayfish has become a rarity ...

HISTORY WITH A LEECH

Vasily, a tenth grader, is sitting on the bank of the river. It's hot and he wants to swim. He undresses, goes to the water, stands on a pebble and tries the water with one foot - isn't it cold? No, just right. Vasily is about to enter the water and suddenly he sees ... Oh-oh-oh! A large leech crawls out of the green mud near the shore. Creeps out and slowly goes just to the place where the boy was going to step.
We will immediately tell you the main thing: this leech would not do anything bad to Vasily and could not do it. It was a leech, which is not dangerous for a person, since it cannot bite through its rather thick skin. Scientists call this leech the false-horse leech, or more precisely, the large false-horse leech (because there are also horse and small false-horse leeches). She is really big: the length of her body can reach up to 15 centimeters, and this is very solid for a leech.
Scientists know all these details, now you and I know, but they were unknown to Vasily. He immediately imagined how a huge leech digs into his naked body and begins to greedily suck blood, swelling before his eyes, and he became scared. Of course, he lost all desire to swim, his mood deteriorated, and he wanted to deal with an unpleasant creature.
Meanwhile, the leech, fearing nothing, slowly crawled along the bottom. She stretched the front end of the body, becoming long and thin, secured by it, and then curved and pulled the rest of the body, quickly turning into a short fat one. In such an unusual way, she didn’t just crawl, but, as it were, “walked” along the bottom ... Vasily found a long stick and tried to pick up a leech in order to throw it ashore, away from the water. But nothing came of this venture. While plunging the stick into the water, he lost his balance and fell into the river, and almost next to the leech. She did not feel bad from this, she crawled to a large tuft of mud and disappeared. But Vasily had a hard time. Although the place was shallow, only knee-deep, the bottom turned out to be clayey, slippery, and the boy could not get ashore for a long time. Finally, wet, dirty, angry, he managed to get out of the water, but no matter how much he looked out at the bottom for the culprit of the incident, in order to take revenge on her, she did not appear.
Was it worth getting angry at the leech? Of course not! After all, she does not know anything at all about the existence of Vasily and that he is very unpleasant. The river is her home, in it she was born and in it her not so eventful life will end.
You could just wait until the leech crawls away. Or swim in another place... All creatures living in the reservoirs are needed there. And even leeches, which some people find so unpleasant, are needed in lakes, ponds and rivers, just like fish, frogs, aquatic insects, shells and other living creatures are needed. We are sure that people will become much better (or so: people will become much better) if they learn to respect the life of all these creatures. Including the life of the most common leech.

RESPECT THE LIFE OF THE EARTHWORM

It is known to everyone, both adults and children. But few people are seriously interested in his life, hidden from us.
Ordinary earthworms most often come across to people after rain, when they appear in large numbers on the surface of the soil. That's why they call them raindrops. Worms do not voluntarily leave underground minks. Rainwater drives them out. But at night, especially in warm weather, the worms come to the surface of their own free will. True, they do not quite get out, but only protrude, clinging to the walls of the mink with the rear end of the body, in order to quickly hide back in case of danger.
Stretching out of the mink, the earthworm scours the ground around and grabs with its mouth damp rotting leaves, half-rotted blades of grass ... It drags all this into its hole and swallows it. Moving in the soil, he swallows it. That's the kind of food he has. You will probably think that it is very tasteless. But there's nothing you can do about it, that's what nature has decreed. The earthworm is supposed to eat what other animals cannot eat.
An earthworm is a harmless and almost defenseless creature. But in nature it is irreplaceable. If a lot of earthworms live in the soil, it is in good condition. These beings are
great workers of the soil. They make it more fertile, passing through the remains of plants and soil lumps. And in the passages of earthworms, the air necessary for the respiration of plant roots is “stored”.
The great scientist Charles Darwin, who specifically studied the life of earthworms, compared them to a caring gardener who prepares the best land for plants.
Some schoolchildren, not really knowing anything about earthworms, sometimes step on them on purpose, but this should never be done. On the contrary, it is better to help the unlucky worm, move it from the road to a safe place.
There was such a case. The sixth graders were digging a vegetable garden and dug up some earthworms. Some guys began to cut them with shovels. The teacher stopped them. She asked to feel sorry for the worms and spoke about their role in the soil. The guys thought. It turns out that they considered worms harmful, they thought that they eat the roots of plants. And they were very surprised when they found out that this was not at all the case, that they had completely different food.
If you're digging in the ground and you see an earthworm, don't purposely cut it open with a shovel. There is a living being in front of you. Like all other living creatures, it deserves respect. And also - a special gratitude for the fact that he works so tirelessly, improving our breadwinner-soil.

WHY WE NEED SHELLS IN THE RIVER

In lakes and rivers, the common barley lives at the bottom. Who is she? She is a bivalve. The whole body of the barley is enclosed in a hard, durable shell, consisting of two wings. The shell in length reaches almost 15 centimeters, in old shells it is greenish-brown. The barley body itself is soft, but there is no head at all.
"Blimey! - you say. - How can you live without a head? Some kind of small, inferior, but the animal should have a big head ... "
But Perlovitsa is not at all offended that she is headless. The fact is that all her close and distant relatives - other bivalve mollusks - do not have a head either, they simply do not need it. But there is one big leg, which they really, really need.
Here the sash of the barley opens slightly and this very leg is shown. She stretches out, fixes herself in a new place and pulls the shell towards her. Then everything repeats. So the shell travels along the bottom.
When they want to say about someone that he is very slow, they sometimes compare him with a tortoise. Yes, turtles crawl very slowly. But what then can be said about the pearl barley, which moves along the bottom at a speed of about one meter per hour!
In river water, especially near the bottom, there are always small particles of clay, silt, and other impurities that make it cloudy. Among them there are also particles edible for barley. To get them, she passes muddy water through herself, many, many muddy waters. And it cleans it up. The more pearls at the bottom, the purer the river water!
All bivalves are aquatic animals that live in rivers, lakes, ponds, seas and oceans.
In the neighborhood of pearl barley, there lives an ordinary toothless one similar to it. This shell has the same bivalve shell, but the valves are wider and thinner. Toothless cleans river water as well as pearl barley.
Boys and girls often meet both with barley and with toothless. And sometimes they treat them very badly. They get shells from the bottom in a shallow place (or even specially dive where they are deeper) and throw them on the shore. But the shells are alive, and on the shore, without water, they will surely die. The guys throw them just like that, for no reason, out of mischief. They drop it for a reason...
One girl once said to the teacher: “When we swim, we hurt our legs about these shells. That's why we throw them ashore."
Well, what can you say ... Of course, neither toothless nor barley deserve such an attitude towards themselves. They are not at all to blame for the fact that the guys are careless. In the river you need to behave in such a way as not to harm yourself. You can, for example, choose a place where there are few or no shells. If the water is clear, you need to look at the bottom so as not to step on the shell. But one should not intentionally harm the living creatures that live in the river. After all, we are here only to rest, and they live. This is their home, and they have no other home.
We ask you very much: when you see a toothless or pearl barley at the bottom, never throw them ashore and do not harm them in other ways.
We hope that we were able to convince you that live bivalve molluscs are very necessary in a river, lake, pond.

GIANT IN THE CLEARING,

OR THE FIRST LESSONS

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Allowance for students of educational institutions

"Education"

GIANT IN THE CLEARING

Our planet Earth is very large in comparison with each person, and he is so small in comparison with it! But the same person walking through a forest clearing, edge, meadow, turns into a huge giant. Firstly, because creatures that are much smaller than a person live in glades and forest edges: beetles and ants, caterpillars and butterflies, bees and bumblebees, spiders and snails, and many, many others. Secondly, because even large inhabitants of the Earth, for example, centuries-old trees, not to mention small creatures, are most often defenseless in front of a person. Moreover, not only an adult, but also a child can be a powerful Giant in a clearing. It's good if this giant is kind. He will not deliberately step on an anthill hidden in the grass, he will not offend a clumsy caterpillar sitting on a leaf, he will not pick a flower in vain, he will not leave garbage behind ... And how sad if the giant turns out to be unkind, indifferent, and even cruel to that, what surrounds him.

We will tell you how best to behave in nature, what can and cannot be done in it and why. After all, nature suffers not only from the smoke of factories and factories, from dirty waste that constantly pours into rivers and seas, from deforestation ... Nature is also bad because many people, picking mushrooms, fishing, just walking and relaxing, often harm her, sometimes without even noticing it. After all, many adults, when they were small, were almost not taught to protect nature at all. And many children have not yet had time to learn this.

The book is called The Giant in the Clearing. But it can also be called differently: "The first lessons of environmental ethics."

What does this mean?

Ethics is the science of the spiritual qualities of a person (such as kindness, honesty, responsiveness), about how to and how not to act in various life situations, about what is good and what is bad.

And ecology is the science of our natural home.

So it turns out that ecological ethics teaches how to treat nature, how to behave in it.

But we wrote: "The first lessons of environmental ethics." What does first lesson mean? Of course, we do not mean ordinary school lessons at all. The book contains only stories, but we hope that they can teach something. And very important and even the most important in relation to nature. In addition, we wrote this book so that it would help you not only in Everyday life but also in school lessons. If you study according to textbooks that say "Green House", then this book will definitely come in handy for you.

Guys live and work on the pages of our book (the same as you, or younger or older than you), their parents, teachers and scientists, tourists and mushroom pickers. Most of the stories told are not fictional, but taken from life.

Animals and plants, stones and soil, water and air - this is all nature. Man is part of it. And if a person is handsome, kind, smart, then this is exactly how - beautiful, kind, smart - his behavior in nature should be.

FUNNY STORY

WITH BRONZE GOLDEN

Lives next to us, meeting on the forest edges and glades, an emerald, sparkling beetle - golden bronze. If in the summer you pass along the edge of the forest and notice the flowering rosehip bushes, stop and look at what is happening on them. Perhaps you are lucky and in one of the bright, fragrant flowers you will see her, bronze. What is she doing here? Of course, it feasts on pollen, which is so abundant in rosehip flowers.

Once a mushroom picker Pyotr Petrovich was walking through the forest. However, he was not an ordinary mushroom picker. Often, without picking mushrooms, he came from the forest very pleased. Friends and neighbors said to him: “Why, Pyotr Petrovich, did you go looking for mushrooms, but the basket is almost empty?”

And he, a little embarrassed, answered that he was not a mushroom picker at all and, probably, mushrooms did not like him.

But the whole point was that in the forest he was interested not so much in mushrooms as in other living creatures inhabiting the forest. And most of all those that have six legs are insects. Encounters with interesting insects gave this kind man more joy than a found mushroom.

Pyotr Petrovich walked through the forest and carefully looked at his surroundings. He looked and listened: would a dexterous, swift-footed beetle run along the path? Will a bright bear-butterfly flash over the grass? Will a beautiful hornet, striped like a tiger, buzz somewhere among the trees?

There are many wonderful insects in the world, they are here, nearby. You just need to love them and at least know a little, and then the desired meeting will definitely happen.

RESPECT THE LIFE OF THE EARTHWORM

It is known to everyone, both adults and children. But few people are seriously interested in his life, hidden from us.

Ordinary earthworms most often come across to people after rain, when they appear in large numbers on the surface of the soil. That's why they call them raindrops. Worms do not voluntarily leave underground minks. Rainwater drives them out. But at night, especially in warm weather, the worms come to the surface of their own free will. True, they do not quite get out, but only protrude, clinging to the walls of the mink with the rear end of the body, in order to quickly hide back in case of danger.

Stretching out of the mink, the earthworm scours the ground around and grabs with its mouth damp rotting leaves, half-rotted blades of grass ... It drags all this into its hole and swallows it. Moving in the soil, he swallows it. That's the kind of food he has. You will probably think that it is very tasteless. But there's nothing you can do about it, that's what nature has decreed. The earthworm is supposed to eat what other animals cannot eat.

An earthworm is a harmless and almost defenseless creature. But in nature it is irreplaceable. If a lot of earthworms live in the soil, it is in good condition. These beings are

great workers of the soil. They make it more fertile, passing through the remains of plants and soil lumps. And in the passages of earthworms, the air necessary for the respiration of plant roots is “stored”.

The great scientist Charles Darwin, who specifically studied the life of earthworms, compared them to a caring gardener who prepares the best land for plants.

Some schoolchildren, not really knowing anything about earthworms, sometimes step on them on purpose, but this should never be done. On the contrary, it is better to help the unlucky worm, move it from the road to a safe place.

There was such a case. The sixth graders were digging a vegetable garden and dug up some earthworms. Some guys began to cut them with shovels. The teacher stopped them. She asked to feel sorry for the worms and spoke about their role in the soil. The guys thought. It turns out that they considered worms harmful, they thought that they eat the roots of plants. And they were very surprised when they found out that this was not at all the case, that they had completely different food.

If you're digging in the ground and you see an earthworm, don't purposely cut it open with a shovel. There is a living being in front of you. Like all other living creatures, it deserves respect. And also - a special gratitude for the fact that he works so tirelessly, improving our breadwinner-soil.

Was it worth getting angry at the leech? Of course not! After all, she does not know anything at all about the existence of Vasily and that he is very unpleasant. The river is her home, in it she was born and in it her not so eventful life will end.

You could just wait until the leech crawls away. Or swim in another place... All creatures living in the reservoirs are needed there. And even leeches, which some people find so unpleasant, are needed in lakes, ponds and rivers, just like fish, frogs, aquatic insects, shells and other living creatures are needed. We are sure that people will become much better (or so: people will become much better) if they learn to respect the life of all these creatures. Including the life of the most common leech.

RESPECT LIFE

EARTHWORM

It is known to everyone, both adults and children. But few people are seriously interested in his life, hidden from us.

An earthworm is a harmless and almost defenseless creature. But in nature it is irreplaceable. If a lot of earthworms live in the soil, it is in good condition. These beings are

The great scientist Charles Darwin, who specifically studied the life of earthworms, compared them to a caring gardener who prepares the best land for plants.

WHY WE NEED

IN THE SHELL RIVER

"Blimey! - you say. - How can you live without a head? Some kind of small, inferior, but the animal should have a big head ... "

But Perlovitsa is not at all offended that she is headless. The fact is that all her close and distant relatives - other bivalve mollusks - do not have a head either, they simply do not need it. But there is one big leg, which they really, really need.

Here the sash of the barley opens slightly and this very leg is shown. She stretches out, fixes herself in a new place and pulls the shell towards her. Then everything repeats. So the shell travels along the bottom.