29. La Crescenta

I have a daughter in La Crescenta which, while not Africa, has signage suggesting a lion situation nonetheless.

Although the mountain lion presence has generated the billboards the black bears are apparently more frequent.

One local legend, nicknamed “meatball” (due to his fetish for Costco meatballs), was relocated numerous times but kept coming back. As the story was related to me, on one occasion they drove him to Colorado and asked the locally controlling authorities if they could release him there. Colorado apparently said ~ “No thank you; we have our own bears”, thus emphasizing the well-known fact that it is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission. This is especially true if the need for forgiveness is finessed by the dark of night—no head lights—quick getaway…..technique.

So Shaving 1 called two days ago to report successful setup in their new home. She called yesterday to report a black bear in the street, at 9:00AM, on their way to church.

This is on top of Shaving 4 calling three days ago to report that a cobra had been milling around in a tree outside his abode.

Which just goes to show that it is, as it has long been and hopefully will remain “a jungle out there”.

Have not heard from Shavings 2 & 3 recently and hope they are watching their “6s”.

ML

9.10.12

28. Togo

I have a son in Africa.

In hindsight it was prescient; which I guess is how prescience always reveals itself.

It was the summer of 2010. We had been making regular trips to the “upper Choccolocco” (the first upstream shoals from the Hy 77 bridge) and decided to walk the Rita 2 over the rocks and see what lay beyond. What lay about a half mile beyond was Jackson Shoals. It was late; we were tired and as far as we could see up stream were rocky waters. A subsequent inspection from Google /map/satellite indicated we chose wisely.

On the return, as we walked the canoe down upper Choccolocco shoals I reflected upon absent hazards as what we were doing  you couldn’t do safely  in Africa; the waters looked a lot like places hippos and crocodiles might be. Of the existent menaces my concern was a cottonmouth coming at me stomach level. Shaving 4 was more worried about underwater turtle attacks on his “privates”; possibly an age thing.

Well he graduates from Eckerd College with a double major in physics and East Asian studies (he’s an “old China hand” by this point), joins the Peace Corps, and gets assigned to Africa! He flew out of the Birmingham airport with a fresh buzz cut, two passports (one regular, one US government) saying he was starting to feel like Jason Bourne.

The first month, in the general vicinity of Lomé with a guest family whose mother felt he was not eating enough, was orientation: customs, language, open a Togo bank account. He had started working on French right after the Peace Corps indicated he looked like their kind of skill set and said “start learning French”. I’m not sure if he has a gift for other languages but he likes learning them and works hard at it. It is not true that “you can do anything you set your mind to” but it is true that you can do a lot more setting your mind to it than not.

During this first month the new Togo Peace Corps volunteers had to deliver a technical speech in French. Since Eckerd, he has taken to memorizing his presentations, e.g. no note cards, and it had gone over well. After he delivered his talk, in French, he noticed that Peace Corp officials he did not know seemed to know who he was.

This is the 50^th year of the Peace Corps and the 50^th year of the Peace Corps in Togo and there is going to be a celebration in the capital attended by Togo’s President, other dignitaries and the distant refrain of Madame Classé –“I told you French was important” –because guess who gets to deliver some remarks on behalf of the new Peace Corps volunteers? While his French is not technically the best of the groups there seems to be something about his delivery that is well received by the Togolese.

So if he isn’t waylaid by a lion, elephant or mamba (or turtle), on September 7 ol’Shaving 4 is going to make his television debut. Togo is only 5 hours ahead of USA central daylight time but I have yet to find anybody that gets Togo TV no matter how many channels their provider brandishes. Well that’s what YouTube’s for, right?

ML

8.31.12

27. Dead in the car

 We traveled west to northern New Mexico on a trek charted by Shaving 2

Snake road hunting inclines one toward watching for fauna, squished and otherwise, when driving and the twelve hundred miles from Birmingham to Red River presented a panorama of road kill that I attempted to share with the shavings.

 In the beginning I would wait until close enough to identify what we were passing and would shout out something like “dead badger”.

This proved an unsatisfactory pedagogical approach as the result was always spinning heads in the back seats and yelps of “where, where?”

In the interest of more timely alerts I changed to “dead on the left (or right or in the road)”.

This worked pretty well and produced a round table discussion after each sighting regarding just exactly what was sighted. While not designed for high speed identification, Flattened Fauna (R. M. Knutson, 1987) might have been of some use.

On the return leg of the trek we stopped by a small highway curio shop. There was a Navajo (E.B.) lady and her son in the parking lot and I got a small painted pot. Inside the shop I found, among other things, rabbit pelts for $2.00. I would have bought one simply based upon the reasonable price but an animal pelt, of any sort, was simply a gag opportunity that I could not let pass by.

With the rabbit pelt inside my shirt, we all piled into the van, and headed east. About 5 minutes down the road (when there were no nearby cars) I yelled “Dead in the car”, waited until somebody said “What?” (Just to make sure they had processed the alert) pulled the rabbit pelt out of my shirt and fired it back over my shoulder into the Shavings.

Instant family life classic.

ML

8.14.12

26. Rita II on patrol

Rita II on patrol:


July 10, 2011 at Choccolocco Creek ( 33.559474,-86.124079)