We’ve all thought about it. Maybe in our darkest moments; maybe during periods of idle daydreaming. What would it be like to kill a womble? And from this, the question always arises – how would one actually go about killing a womble?
That eminent guardian of the archetype, Carl Jung, grappled with the issue of womblecide – and its status as the ultimate fantasy in the human psyche – throughout his life and never came to any satisfactory conclusions. To Jung, there was something pleasing in “the absolute conjunction of childhood innocence and human taboo” that is encapsulated in the malicious taking of a womble’s life. In the womble, says Jung…
- …we find innocence. We find the simple world-view of a child. Bumbling, social, friendly, trusting, unconditionally receptive to the thoughts, ideas and fundamental character of others. The womble represents childhood innocence and the simple optimism of naive youth. In maiming a womble, we might discover the individual experiences of life that slowly erode that innocence. But in terminating the life of the womble, we see the irredeemable loss of innocence – and perhaps, more significantly an instinctive hostility towards it.
Jung’s suspicion was that the fantasy of womblecide is born of a deeply ingrained survival instinct – that of mistrust. While it is crucial, Jung argues, to trust others (in particular, the mother) in one’s formative years, in establishing independence, the attitude of trust leaves one open to attack. Thus one must “kill” one’s early naivety at an early opportunity, in order to ensure self-survival. The fantasy of womblecide is the archetypal manifestation of this crucial leap in self development. While Jung never fully completed this theory, it is easy to see the direction in which he was taking it – and it is hard to discount his general thesis.
It may be, then, that the actual mechanics of womblecide are academic. If it stands as a metaphor – killing off a part of ourselves – then the modus operandi is irrelevant. If this is the case – and this was one of the areas that Jung found himself unable to answer to his satisfaction – why is it, when we think of killing a womble, that we are so bogged down with anxieties as to how to effect his demise to the best possible outcome? Why is it we grapple with the questions of method and objective, so obsessively? We have all done it. The first question we all ask, of course, regards the fundamental objective behind killing the womble in the first place. Do we just want to terminate him; or do we want him to suffer? Jung referred to this issue as the Maim, Kill, Torture Question. It is strange that our unconscious mind delivers such ambivalence on this issue. The second question (what Jung referred to as Confronting the Womble Within) stems directly from this concern, and leads us to explore the variety of ways in which we might annihilate our wombellic victim. Again, we have all deliberated painfully over the options open to us. A bullet through the head… strangulation… garrotting… asphyxiation… drowning… poisoning… the options are endless. And if we are considering torture as an instrument of the womble’s demise, the playing field opens up even further. There are no limits to a womble’s peril, for anyone with just half an imagination. My favourite method, at the moment, involves a potato peeler and a large packet of salt and vinegar crisps. Of course, the womble would have to be shaved first!
It is fair to say that no one has the answer. And yet everyone has their own answers. Talk to different people and you will hear a whole spectrum of preferences reflecting different attitudes to what is, it becomes clear, a very personal matter. I have spoken to burly bikers who have talked of dragging the womble behind their bike at speed, until it disintegrates in to an incoherent mess of blood and gore and matted fur. I have spoken to school children who imagine themselves throwing the womble from the top of a high building, hearing it scream in terror, towards its sudden demise. Old ladies have told me how they’d like to disembowel the womble, “gazing in to its eyes to see its final terror”, when they present its own internal organs for its inspection. Reliable, staid civil servants have shown a more anarchic side to their bland exteriors on describing how they would like to push the womble in to a large meat blender at a food processing factory, or would enjoy boiling the womble alive, bringing it only slowly to boiling point in order to prolongue its pain. A vicar has talked of bundling the womble in to the boot of a car, before sending the car to be crushed. One young mother spoke of her desire to see a womble hacked to death with a chainsaw. A group of charity workers in Mumbai spend their evenings devising elaborate ways for a womble to die and have most recently come up with the notion of using heavy weights to sink the womble to the bottom of the sea so that the intense pressure makes him implode. Paul Daniels quipped that while Debbie McGee always manages to regenerate her physical integrity after being sawn in half, a womble could not hope to be so lucky! The infinte array of mechanisms and methods put forward to kill the womble do support Jung’s main proposition that the killing of the womble is an archetype; and that the individual will mould this archetype to suit his or her own sensibilities or cultural context.
In practical terms, perhaps the best advice we can defer to is that given by the late Rod Hull. It is not largely known that Hull was a real-life womble hunter and that he could often be found around the parks and commons of Wimbledon, tracking and hunting the hapless subjects of his annihilating intentions. Hull would occasionally employ sundry methods in the hunting of his wombellic prey. It was not unknown for him to lay viciously toothed womble traps, to use caustic acid on a fleeing quarry, to hack a womble to death with a machette and even to use a military flame thrower on his unfortunate quarry. On one occasion, after spending a full day hunting a womble (in Hull’s unfinished memoirs he tells us that the womble in question was Wellington – however, there is some confusion here, since he claimed to have garrotted Wellington some weeks previously. The consensus from researching academics is that the womble in question was probably Orinoco), Hull was so impressed by the womble’s ability to evade him, that he decided to let the womble go, to fight another day. However, the womble did not get off Scott-free. As Hull humorously tells us: “Before I let him go, I fished out my knife, pinned him to a tree and gave him a Chelsea grin. It gave me some satisfaction to know that the little bastard would smile eternally, in memory of me…”
Rod Hull gave Orinoco something to smile about, with a Chelsea Grin
While Hull would revert to these sundry methods of womblecide, his general method was to use a shotgun. This method, Hull tells us, is best employed in twilight – at dusk or dawn – or during the darkest hours of night. Attaching a torch to the barrel of his gun, Hull discovered that he was able to stun and disorientate nocturnally mooching wombles. The effect of the torchlight shone directly in its eyes would have the effect of causing the womble to freeze. Hull found this a fascinating and useful discovery. “The womble becomes hypnotised, allowing you to take your time, take aim and blow its brains out at your leisure!”. Of course, darkness has its own disadvantages – not least in finding the womble in the first place. However, as Hull assures us, wombles are not quiet in their foraging and they fairly easy to locate. Furthermore, their habits are easy to recognise and one soon comes to realise that they will frequent certain areas of Wimbledon Common at pretty much the same time every day. They are easy prey, Hull tells us, once you know how they tick.
Hull’s final advice is invaluable. The surest way to kill a womble is to blast it through the face. The architecture of the womble’s face is such that a volley of shot, well-aimed, will serve to instantly kill or fatally maim the quarry. Womble skulls are weak and the chances of shot penetrating the brain are very high indeed. This will, of course, lead to immediate death. Should such penetration of the Cranium Womballis not occur, then the fragile integrity of the bone is liable to send splinters of bone all over the womble’s body – in to the brain; in to airwaves; or down in to the womble’s internal organs. The latter case will see intense internal bleeding and will be as fatal as the former two. If, by some chance, the womble does not die by these means, then he will die of blood loss and asphyxiation. As Hull tells us, “I have never once shot a womble in the face and failed to blow its nose off”. This destruction of the womble’s nose – in effect, his entire face – is fatal, regardless of the womble’s robusticity.
We should be thankful – as should Jung – that our collective unconscious has given us the womble as an archetype. As Rod Hull demonstrated during his lifetime, wombles are easy to kill, with a little know-how; and so the archetype is safe; it is manageable. Had the collective unconscious been less discriminating in its choice of archetype, we could now be living in a society paralysed with anxiety. In light of this statement, I will leave the last words to Rod Hull:
- Wombles are one thing. But the quarry that has always left me frustrated is the flump. I consider myself a good huntsman. I am ruthless and calculating. I am watchful and patient. But none of my skills have ever been effective in bringing a flump to its demise. They are cunning and intelligent and deceptively agile. They are physically hardy and have a well-honed pack instinct that can serve to confuse and intimidate the huntsman. To add to this, they often use a trombone (from which it is sometimes necessary for them to unplug a stray carrot) to create a sense of unease in those that would see them fall. Flumps have proved to be my biggest challenge; and my most noble enemy. I have a huge wooden plaque over my fireplace. It is flump-shaped. And should I die without it being populated, I will die an unhappy man.
Sadly, Rod Hull died an unhappy man.
Flumps are cunning... intelligent... deceptively agile... and have a well-honed pack instinct that can serve to confuse and intimidate the huntsman. - Rod Hull