2023-09-20 19:51:00
In the Grimm fairy tale about the slowworm and the nightingale, both of them only have one eye each. When the nightingale is invited to a wedding, she asks the slowworm to lend her eye for the ceremonial occasion. But because the bird likes the two eyes so much, the slowworm doesn’t get hers back.
In reality, the slowworm is not blind at all, but the name comes from Old High German plintslicho traced back, meaning dazzling or shining sneak. And really, the slowworm that lay on the terrace of the little house on the edge of the forest in Brandenburg that morning had shimmering skin. Only she appeared dead, with a blood-encrusted wound at the end. We also discovered blood stains on the tiles. A heavy battle seemed to have taken place here during the night.
Suddenly it did move, and a quick search revealed that slowworms, like lizards, shed their tails in an emergency. It twists and turns so that the attacker – a hedgehog or large bird – pounces on it while the animal runs away. A fragile snake is the generic name that Carl Linnaeus gave the slowworm, fragile snake – even if it is not a snake at all.
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Evading military service by gouging out an eye
This ability to reject a body part is called controlled self-mutilation, a quick internet search revealed. A fascinating word for an action that is probably carried out instinctively in animals. But people resort to such extreme measures when it comes to life or death. It is said that there was a unit of one-eyed men in the Egyptian army, as many men tried to avoid military service by gouging out one eye.
During the First and Second World Wars, the word “home shot” was used to describe an injury so severe that it could only be treated at home. In Heinrich Böll’s short story “The Wounding”, 18-year-old Hans is shot in the back and is happy because the wound is the ticket for a place on the hospital train heading home. He puts his friend Hubert in touch with a local gun salesman who shoots him in the arm.
We brought the slowworm, which paid for its life with two thirds of its body that night, behind the rhododendron, to temporary, uncertain safety.
#Slowworms #people