Letter from Chicago

Dear Martha, 

Today, I was plowing the new field, and I saw a meadowlark.  I really like that kind of bird; I love its song.  It’s a good neighbor, too.  It eats the insects, and you know we have too many of them.  The meadowlark kept flying back and forth, as thought it were looking for something.   I thought perhaps it was searching for the pond.  We had to fill in the pond in order to cerate more land to grow corn. 

Maybe it was looking for its nest from last year.  There’s about ten acres of prairie that I’ve left near the road, so I thought the bird might go there.  However, it flew away and I’m unsure where it went.  I saw plenty of tractors, though, that were on their way to the farms.  It’s plowing time for everyone. 

I met Mr. Thompson at the store, and  I told him all about the meadowlark.  He said, long ago there were so many that you could almost hear them sing like a choir.  It was so pretty, he recalled, but he had yet to see any at all this year.   

Mr. Thompson said that the more we plow, the less we’ll see animals, except for our cows and chickens, of course.  He said we are going to pay the price for this one day.  One day we will not have the birds to control the insects.  Then those insects will be eating our crops. 

I told him that I’d heard there was a kind of spray you can buy that kills the insects.  I mentioned that I was planning to purchase some.  I can’t afford to lose our corn crop.  I asked the store manager for some spray.  I left with some clippers, that spray, and fertilizer. 

Mr. Thompson just shook his head.  “I wish we had not made all this progress,” he said.  Tractors are helping us grow more, but tractors are helping us get rid of nature, too.  We have lost our prairies;  You won’t see them again.” 

I got the whole field plowed today.  Tomorrow we’ll put in the seed.  This is going to be a great year.  I hope you can come to visit  this spring.  Of course, we’ll have some work for you to do, but it will be good to be together again.