Happy Birthday, Quiet Sapa!

[SergeiSK]

Happy Birthday and a gift attached research Dmitry Bykov on quiet sapah:

Animal got its name because doing everything quietly snuffling. The first mention of him we find in the chronicles of the ancient Slavonic texts. For example, in the annals of 1235 we read: "The prince Mihajlo Sour quiet sapoyu prokradoshesya to the room of his brother Maxim Gorky and rivers to him: brother, why dishonor my wife, Princess Anna? And vtykosha in his blade, it is in the of inverse povorotisha chest three times. " Of course you know this sentence pattern. You are themselves sometimes say: turn like a snake, a wolf run ... Likewise, said the ancient Slavs: get on the sly. That means - to go very slowly, on soft paws, and then do something sudden and harmful.

Quiet sape - small animals gray or reddish-brown color, and their main distinguishing feature - a kind of device the nasopharynx. Noses snorting arranged so that the inhalation of air animal produces a pleasant, soothing posapyvanie, as if saying: nothing, nothing, I posoplyu-posoplyu, but you will not do harm ... Put to sleep this posapyvaniem gradually stopped paying attention to the animal, and when bethink, your favorite apple jam already eaten ... Sausage nibble ... noodles hanging on all the door handles ... disappeared lovely new trousers and a shirt with a great Baikova gilt buttons ...

Quiet glanders can not be neither manageable nor tame. Ancient Slavs liked to take quiet glanders in the house: it seemed that this household animals like cats, and that they will serve as an excellent fun for the whole family, especially for children. What surprise vyatichey, kryvichy and Rusich when animal gladly drank milk from a saucer, eating freshly baked bread, and the next day disappeared, taking with him a couple of chickens and all the available money in the house. Money ancient Slavs were first clay shards, and then gold or silver coins. Quiet sapa accurately allocate these objects from the pile of others and easily find them. It is not surprising that thieves around the world are paying dearly for the Russian silent can (this animal is found nowhere else). The price for a quiet glanders has always been high: when the first representatives of this wonderful family was brought to Paris (and it happened at sunset gallant century), for one glanders on the black market could take a carriage with three horses. This is understandable: it is necessary to run a quiet glanders in a shelter, and she immediately finds most valuable. All this she took along with him leaving, but so imperceptibly that no one manages to wake up. And if someone wakes up and accidentally ... such a person will calm glanders for the cat and yes even say something to her gently: walk, they say, Pussy! And the kitty is full of cheek pouches of money and under his arm a piece of sausage ...

Do honest people quiet sape always provoked hatred. Thus, in the memoirs of D'Artagnan Messer says: "Richelieu sly took it all the power" ... A century later the great Russian educator Antiochus Cantemir wrote in his famous satire, "The quiet sape ': For thou calm animal, calling sap, everywhere you go with a long tail, with soft paw, food that is bad - it suesh cheek, only to fall afraid master's CMO. Lo and behold - stolen by the treasury, in disgrace Power, Sape greedy sopyat the left and right. Peter I with its inherent radicalism was trying to destroy sap throughout entrusted to him by the state. However, glanders decimating the forests of central Russia, Peter had not paid attention to what was going on under his nose. His favorite, Alexander Menshikov fattened up in his palace at least a dozen sap, by which, and plundered the state treasury. In fairness, we note that the animals were loyal to their master furtively, feeling in him a kindred spirit. When Menshikov for embezzlement and the desire for power has been sent to Berezov, sap followed him and gave him the means of subsistence. Of course, now they were no longer fur and gold, and frozen potatoes with a neighbor's garden.

Fighting sapami was well placed under Paul I, who once personally caught the brazen animal in their quarters. Followed by Peter, he proceeded to extermination of sap, which, of course, could not appeal the court of the corrupt. As a result, Paul was killed, and the sap is almost legally continued to plunder the Russian state. True, one can not deny the fact that during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia was quiet Sapam has been entrusted to set fire to Moscow, where feasting is pleased Bonaparte. Animals quiet sapami sneaked into town and back safely, accomplish its mission. True, the ineradicable habit of stealing, they grabbed a few uniforms with epaulets French cuirassier, who dragged his teeth and did not throw, no matter what the danger. Epaulettes attracted animals golden glow. Known utterance Kutuzov: "Bonaparte we decided to take the fly, and Russian works on the sly, yes but surely." Since then, the French began to search tool against a dangerous animal that could jokingly penetrate into the rear of the enemy. There was even a special squad of scouts, called non-combat engineers ... Sappers searched for nests of quiet can (animals live in families with seven or eight individuals in the hollow) and ruthlessly persecuted animals. But it is not so easy to deal with them! A case when five bristling with sap so frightened furious wheezing French Lancer, that he began to run aimlessly. The same evening he made from the fear of an unforgivable mistake - going to the emperor to the report, started the movement with his right foot and was kicked out of the guard. No request for reinstatement does not help: "Minesweeper is wrong just once," - said Napoleon. This phrase has become his cruise.

During the Great Patriotic War quiet sap were reliable helpers guerrillas. Here is an entry from the diary of a prisoner a German officer: "In this damn country not at war. First, frost, and secondly, these strange hybrids of cats to rats, who robbed the store the day before yesterday, and today quietly ate and took time from the headquarters of all the cards . If it goes any further, I deserters ". As a reward for their military achievements quiet glanders was listed as endangered. In stagnant seventies, when to speak loudly and was dangerous to stand out from the crowd no one wanted, a quiet glanders was a real idol of party functionaries. Thus, the schemer and a cynic, Andropov had a stuffed animal on his desk in the office of chief of the KGB. Sapa migrated with him to the Kremlin when he became general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Last year, it's stuffed, fairly poedennoe moth, was sold at auction Sotheby's for an amount that far exceed the cost of three horses from the coach or even three "Mercedes with a driver.

If you want to see a quiet glanders, select a fine autumn day ... like now this ... and step into the woods outside Moscow, where the air is so transparent and so nice to smell the mushroom dampness. Lay out on a clearing sandwiches with sausage and cheese (just look, they should be even with the oil rather than with some margarine "Rama ")... Remove the thermos with hot coffee ... and pretend that you are going to arrange a halt - that is to roll a pillar of an old tree. And then pretend that distracted and lulled our vigilance. Soon you will see in the faded grass, as if flowing in the direction of the sandwich brownish skin animal. Quiet sap never walk alone. Soon you will hear the soothing, gentle sniff, but in any case not fall asleep. May even, like Ulysses, my ears. So: do not trust the animals sniff and carefully observe how your sandwiches are carried away on the sly in her cozy den - - in the hollow of an oak or in a forest ravine. There are animal, quietly and gently champing, devour everything stolen. And do not be surprised if at the same time you will not find yourself in all the cash and car keys. Importantly, keep the thermos! Thermos beware! But if you want to achieve something in life, carefully observe animal habits. This will greatly help you. One quiet glanders is now at the computer. Hear the quiet posapyvanie? Here the animal is perfectly safe. He simply had nothing to steal. Now we brought him to the microphone, and he there posopit. By the way, where the microphone? Where the microphone ...?
( The author of this opus - a journalist "interlocutor" Dmitry Bykov )