Chapter 1244: Mutual Cooperation

To ensure the children's enthusiasm, every season, they would go everywhere to promote that parents were not allowed to confiscate the children's labor property or labor income; whatever the children wanted to exchange for, they decided for themselves. If parents insisted on demanding and confiscating it, the children could report their parents, and the temporarily formed Bird-Driving Team—that is, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture—would handle it and reprimand the parents.

The Ministry of Agriculture knew the importance of these little brats; letting them go pull weeds or pull wheat, they didn't have much strength, but they couldn't be left idle either, as children were most likely to cause trouble when idle.

If they went down to the river to bathe and swim and drowned, that was one family's trouble, but if the children played with fire, and a fire started, the entire summer harvest and Autumn Harvest would be ruined.

So it was better to let them do some proper work, let the "child king" act as a Small Team leader to manage the little brats under them, divide them into areas, and go catch birds themselves; if they wanted to manage their own family's land, that was no problem either, as it was all in the interest of maintaining the farmland of Huaxia.

The Ministry of Agriculture was also very open-minded regarding expenditures; rather than letting the birds eat the grain, it was better to let the children eat it. The children would grow stronger from eating it, while the birds would only messily defecate if they ate it.

The grain eaten by ten birds in one harvest season was enough to make two pieces of Maltose; how wonderful it would be to turn this grain into candy and reward the children with it, so the Ministry of Agriculture never skimped on the children's rewards.

Furthermore, each area would compile statistics on the children's achievements. At the end of the harvest season, each sub-district would calculate the most capable children; the top one hundred would all receive rewards, and the reward for the top three was enough for one person to eat their fill for a year, along with some more special prizes.

If the total was the best in the entire city, they were directly commended, which brought honor to their parents, and they were also rewarded with Meat Tickets, Tea Leaves, and other items rarely found in ordinary households. With such rewards, not only the children but also the parents were highly motivated, yet the overall expenditure of Huaxia was not large.

It could prevent bird damage and also keep these children occupied for the summer vacation, preventing them from running around, causing harm, or getting into accidents—killing two birds with one stone. After all, when those little brats woke up, the first thing they did was hurry to find a place to hunt birds, rather than going somewhere to fool around.

The Four Pests were truly the four pests in this era; there was simply no way to deal with flies and mosquitoes. Moreover, being adjacent to the Dahe, there were even more mosquitoes, which were impossible to eradicate. Fortunately, they were not that venomous, and being bitten was not that itchy.

Regarding the Bird-Driving and Rat-Catching Team, Baifeng believed that in the next hundred or even thousand years, it would remain very important and would become increasingly formalized, because it was a necessity.

Humans had two animal companions, the dog and the cat. The dog had been basically domesticated; although it might revert to its ancestral state at any time, after another hundred years of selective breeding, the dog would likely be completely separated from the wolf, its temperament and such would be more stable, and various different breeds would also appear.

As for the cat, Baifeng did not know where to find one now. After all, history said that cats might have come from the pharaoh's homeland, and the current Huaxia and the Nile River Basin were simply too far apart.

But Baifeng also knew that within the borders of Huaxia, there were many types of wild felines; cats were not the exclusive property of the pharaoh.

There were several types of large tigers, even more medium-sized leopards, and small ones like Pallas's cats and lynxes were unlikely to be domesticated because, although they were called small, they were still a bit large compared to cats and posed a relatively greater threat to humans.

Only smaller ones like leopard cats, steppe cats, and Chinese mountain cats could possibly be domesticated. The Li Hua cats and orange cats that Huaxia had raised for thousands of years were actually still semi-wild.

It was not like the relationship between humans and dogs, which was one of subordination; it was more like a cooperative relationship.

You provide me with shelter and food, and I work for you, and most of the time, I don't need you to provide me with food—that was the cat.

Some Li Hua cats or orange cats might have many owners at the same time, but these owners thought they were the only one; this was very common in cities.

In rural areas, it was very normal for a Li Hua cat to go out for a day or two. It was also possible for it not to return for half a month, or maybe even a year or two, but one day when you woke up, you would find it lying at the head of your bed sleeping.

Because it was semi-wild, if it felt it was strong enough, it would leave home to struggle in the wild; when tired, injured, or short of food, it would return to its employer's home to stay for a period of time to recover its health.

Furthermore, domestic cats had no reproductive isolation from some wild cats, especially leopard cats. Many Li Hua cats would give birth to leopard cat offspring, though these second-generation leopard cats were also protected species, just to prevent certain people from exploiting legal loopholes to breed and sell protected species.

(Aside)

One thing I was proud of regarding my father also involved cats. Perhaps some people born before the nineties knew that a place called Dingxi once experienced a rat plague that lasted for several years.

There were rats everywhere. At night, one could set up an electric cat trap, and by day, one could see a pile of electrocuted rats. With no other choice, they used poison—all kinds of rat poison—but as a result, the few remaining cats were poisoned to death, and the rat plague became even more severe.

My geography teacher once said that the people of a certain county were just tough; they used rat poison everywhere for the plague, and when it rained, all the water went into the reservoir. That reservoir was the water source for the people of one county and several towns, and the rat poison was likely over the limit, but no one was seen to be poisoned.

Under those circumstances, my father wrote an article and submitted it, which was published in the provincial daily newspaper. After it received attention, many cats were brought in from the south and then released into various townships.

Afterward, the rat plague was alleviated and gradually returned to normal. Later, those cats continued to breed and remained in the local area. It could be said that at least the cats in our county came from the south to the northwest because of my father's influence.

I myself am also very fond of cats. Of course, my father also received a five-yuan manuscript fee in the nineties because his article was accepted, which was still very impressive.

(Aside ends)