Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

There is something universal in the hoarding of treasure. Of course, the image that leaps to mind is a dragon, curled around its mountain of questionably attained gold decorated with only slightly bloodied armor, one emerald eye cracked open to guard against intruders.

Hoarding though, isn’t just about the gold. In fact, we hoard some pretty weird stuff.

I knew a lady in a nursing home that kept a rather hefty stash of spoons, and another with at least thirty red crayons, but not a single other color. When I taught school, I saw kids collect everything from rubber wrist bands to empty energy drink cans with surprising fervor.

I have to admit, I myself have a huge stash of craft supplies, including half a freezer full of unworked rabbit skins. Weird, I know, but it is my stash, and you can’t touch it. That’s the nature of hoarding, after all.

The scary television series aside, hoarding isn’t all bad, at least not for scientists.

Several animal species rely on hoarding, mostly of seeds and nuts, to survive the bitter winters. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’ve been doing this since before the ice age. Which is kind of cool, because as the stashes of some of the long defunct ground squirrels in Siberia are revealed due to the retreat of the glaciers, a few of these seeds have proven to still be viable. Which has let some very excited botanists and paleo-botanists actually grow plants that have been extinct since before the glaciers even formed.

Similar hordes, this time formed by the grieving followers of expired pharaohs, have led to uncovering other viable seeds preserved within tombs for the afterlife, right alongside the decaying chariots and stacks of carved ushabti servants. Again, some of these represent plant species that have been gone for hundreds of years.

On a slightly more disturbing note, many serial killers victims are only identified because keeping a hoard of ‘trophies’ is common among those that are addicted to murder. Sad and disturbing as that is, it can lead to answers for grieving families, or to justice.

The fact is that for good or ill, hoarding is as much a part of the human psyche as it is part of the squirrel brain. Some of us hoard wealth, studying investments like they held the secret to eternal life. For others it is photographs, or a collection of antique dolls that we can’t help but add to.

This isn’t a terrible thing.

The impulse that drives squirrels to bury nuts plants forests actually grows the forests themselves. For us, the desire to hoard and preserve creates National Parks, libraries, and museums. As much as I enjoy looking at a pretty golden trinket, if I were a dragon, that’s not what I’d collect. I doubt that books and works of art would form a comfortable bed, but what could be more worth preserving than beauty and knowledge?

Cheers,

Michelle