February 16, 2023 – Chitabe, Botswana
“I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the Giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness, as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long-stemmed, speckled gigantic flowers advancing.”
Out of Africa – Karen Blixen
“Whatever You Do, Don’t Run. Food runs. And there is nothing here that you can outrun anyway.”
Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True tales of a Botswana Safari Guide – Peter Allison
“In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life here is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension.”
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun – A Memoir of Africa – Peter Godwin
After the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled
The wise hyaenas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.
How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit
They snout the bushes and stones aside
And dig till they come to it.
They are only resolute they shall eat
That they and their mates shall thrive,
And they know that the dead are safer meat
Than the weakest thing alive.
Rudyard Kipling – “The Hyaenas”
Gervais
Food runs, quite a concept. I’ll remember that the next time I see a cougar or bear in the yard.
Meanwhile, my peanut butter toast remained pleasantly static on my plate this morning.
Russ
It is absolutely true, speed is never going to get us out of trouble here. Cunning and camouflage are the only survival mechanisms that work. You are aware of my diminished cranial capacity, and you saw the fluorescent chicken legs, so you know I am dead meat if anything stalks me.