Were it not for the recent shock revelations of PC Andy Ward of Lochearnhead, I could now be on the way to being a moss millionaire. For moss is money, big money. I was set to be the George Soros of moss.
A recent adventure by PC Ward assured me
this was so. In a startling column in the local Villagers magazine, he laid bare just how lucrative moss can be.
Last November he and a colleague, PC Donaldson, were in Airdrie investigating thefts that had occurred in Killin during the summer when they were summoned to Bridge of Allan. There had been a strange and baffling complaint.
A woman walking her dog saw a man collecting bags of moss. PC Ward, in his capacity as a Police Wildlife Liaison Officer, went to the scene and noted details from the witness "as well as taking photographs for future evidential value". It immediately became apparent that a number of offences had been committed under the Wildlife & Countryside Act, 1981 and the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act, 2004.
As a result of PC Ward's extensive enquiries, a male was arrested in Sussex. No fewer than 30 dustbin bags full of moss were recovered from his home. A report was forwarded to the Procurator Fiscal. PC Ward had to journey to Eastbourne to attend proceedings.
Readers will be dismayed by the damage caused through loss of habitat to insects and invertebrates. It can take up to five years to make good. But that, I confess, was not the angle that caught my attention. It was the figure for the commercial value of the moss. It danced before my eyes. The haul, gathered in just two months, was reckoned to have a value of more than £500,000.
Our garden at Lochearnhead took on a different hue. I have piles of moss this high. Moss in the compost bin, moss in the council recycling bin, moss raked up to go in the compost bin when the old moss decomposes. And moss still on the lawn, springing up underfoot as soon as the old moss is raked off. Here is a mossy lawn no more. It's a self replenishing money machine: rake in a fortune, then another one. It's green gold, a field of spongy emeralds. Why, that load in the council recycling bin alone must be worth five years of council tax.
Last weekend, after reeling from a drug-induced high from scattering Sunshine of Africa cocoa bark on the rose beds, I calculated my moss fortune at several millions. That wasn't including the moss under the pine trees by the burn, and a big spread beneath Mrs McEwan's fir tree. All I had to do was bag it up and feed it into those black market supply lines running to the moss-starved crime capitals of Eastbourne, Bournemouth and Budleigh Salterton. I would soon be the new Roman Abramovitch of moss, no mere hedge fund tycoon, but a Moss Mogul.
It was not long before this reverie was shattered by the All Wise One. "You've got the wrong moss, dear", she intoned as if reading out one of her cryptic crossword clues. "The moss that's valuable is Sphagnum moss. You've got common moss. Not at all the same thing."
I put this down to her recent apocalyptic visions of the coming food crisis and her campaign to turn my rose beds into cabbage patches and have the lawn ripped up for carrots and runner beans. Do other The Good Life wannabes forget so easily the early years of grow-your-own vegetables? The digging and forking for a crop of shrapnel-hard peas that just about runs to two helpings? The grub-eaten carrots that barely extend three inches? And the beguilingly simple potato barrel, filled with enough fertiliser and nitrogen to blow up Baghdad, that finally yielded six spuds the size of marbles? Self sufficiency in food? We'd be dead in days.
The All Wise One winched up her blazing Know All guns. Sphagnum, or peat moss is found in peat bogs. It can hold up to 20 times its dry weight in water. It can also acidify its surroundings and release hydrogen ions. The Strange Case of the Vanishing Moss which PC Ward attended was also in a Site of Special Scientific Interest, not to be confused with this here. We've got common or garden moss.
My cocoa bark high gave way to shakes of acute withdrawal. Dreams of riches turned from green to scorched brown. In any event, she added, what were my contacts with the criminal underworld, exactly? How was I proposing to transport the moss to Eastbourne?
And hadn't I forgotten one tiny little thing? We're right on the A85. And the motorcyclist who's just driven past giving our compost heap the evil eye? Was that not our friendly Police Wildlife Liaison Officer – the very PC Ward, no less, on patrol?
As I was saying officer, it's bog standard moss, honest, not worth a bean at Dobbies.
The full article contains 851 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
