Conversation with an insect.
"Oh excuse me", I say, as I cross paths with a stick insect, whilst climbing up one of the olive trees.
" quiet the racket ye lot are making", was the response I got.
"I was hoping that ye would skip this tree, but no, ye had to come and make noise and disrupt our peace".
"I'm dreadfully sorry", I say. Honestly, I was just so caught up in the harvesting, that I wasn't necessary paying attention to the impact of our work, not on the smaller beings that reside in the tree. That use it for shelter.
So after taking a moment to digest what the littke fellow said, I realised how we had got into quite a stride, moving from one tree to another, quite efficiently. It's what happens naturally, when you work with the same people, ye just slide into a comfortable pace and things just get easier.
"We got to do this tree though, because in order to be able to use the mill tomorrow, we have to have a minimum of 500kgs of olives", I tell 'Sticky'.
"Plus, the olives are really ripe". I say.
" Do you think these olives, were made just for you?", Sticky asked me.
"Of course not", I reply.
" I am just, very grateful that there is such an abundance and that we can harvest some of them. I have no desire to take them all. I understand that I have no right to them, that we, have no right to them all." (We, meaning us humans.)
I could tell that Sticky, was pretty happy with my response, especially cos he followed it up with the following.
" Well I guess maybe I'd be happy to share this tree, for a little while. As long, ye promise to leave the tree as you found her.
"Well, we do tend to remove the dead pieces, the small branches, when we harvest. We have to hit the branches after all, which is my least favourite part. So I apologise before I do it. I always like to express my gratitude to each tree, how could I not". Was my response.
It seemed, I had just made a friend.
And a good one, at that.