Saturday, July 31, 2010

TRUE OR FALSE?

Some time ago the Discovery Channel on DSTV had a program of a team in the USA who specialized in trying out all sorts of sayings to find out whether they are true or false, and one particular saying that they tested for "true" or "false" interested me very much.


Now you all know that we compare someone who is extremely clumsy to a bull in a china shop, and the team investigated this saying by "constructing a china shop" in a corral in one of the western states where the people still like to have rodeos, one item of which being riding a bull and whoever remained on top for the longest period was the winner. The bulls used are of course not very tame otherwise the whole contest would be non-existent! The team put up four shelves, each about 3 m long and 1,5 m high, with a space between them that would easily accommodate two people passing each other, which is just about the width of a normal bull, and then filled the shelves with all sorts of crockery articles. They then chased six bulls into the corral where the shelves were and the six bulls wandered around between the shelves for about ten minutes and did not even knock over one item of all the pieces on the shelves, let alone breaking anything!



Is like a bull in a china shop a true or a false comparison?

Oupa

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

The newspaper reminded us the other day that it was 50 years ago the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, made his "Winds of Change" speech in our Parliament. Of course he was right, because things change just about daily, but some changes take longer. The political changes in South Africa did take a long time after the speech of the Prime Minister, but I am not going to amuse you with politics, I want to refer to some other changes, specifically changes in our day to day living, for instance, food.




When Mr Harold made his speech 50 years ago, we were still trying to absorb all the changes brought about by the Second World War, and many of them changed our eating habits and I am now thinking about meat consumption. At that particular time things like ox tails, offal, and tongue were not in great demand, in fact, many people looked down upon them, because in the days gone by our consumption of meat was quite different from what we regard as the norm today, the three that I mentioned above, were not considered quite the correct thing by many of our citizens, and were therefore quite cheap, after all, the butchers wanted to sell all of the meat of a slaughtered animal and not just certain portions. But look at the current situation: ox tail and tongue are quite expensive and offal is just about impossible to get unless you have a very special contact!



And then there is the saying "the more things change, the more they remain the same", which is quite true for many things in life, but not for items bound by fashion, like food, clothes, hair styles and the like.



What is going to change next?



Oupa

THE GARBAGE REMOVER

Maria, the same evening when you saw the hyenas outside the fence of Letaba, I heard them inside the fence of our township! They were not far away from our house and were giving their long drawn out cooooweeehp, but on other occasions I have heard them making quite a variety of sounds. They are very interesting animals and very often misunderstood by us humans.

The species we have here, is the spotted hyena (Crocuta) and long ago they ranged over most of Africa, excluding the rain forest in central Africa, as they are equally at home in the bush as in desert regions and they roamed from sea level to the snow line of Kilimandjaro in order to be able to do their work: removal of any dead animal (including humans), reptile, fish, or bird! They have very powerful jaws and can crush even the thick thigh bones of the buffalo and they eat the hides, bones and hooves of smaller animals. Where other predators, like lions and leopards, are plentiful, they will clean up after the lion prides have eaten their share, but they will chase away single lions, leopards, and cheetahs from their kills. If they can not find enough food by scavenging, they will hunt, singly or in packs and are known to have brought down sick of wounded buffalo, but their normal prey consists of the smaller antelopes, baboons, ostriches, tortoises, in fact, any meaty animal!

They are about the size of a largish dog, with a sloping back and much bigger neck, head, and jaws. The body colour is a variable buff to grey, sometimes even reddish brown and they have blackish spots over most of the body, and unlike dogs, they have only four toes on the front feet. Shoulder height is about 80 cm to 1 m and body mass around 45 to 55 kg, but up to 90 kg have been reported. When hungry, they can consume up to nearly a third of their body mass. The pups are nearly black when born, but after a few months the pelt becomes lighter and spotted. The pups are born underground and kept there for about six weeks.

Very interesting predators, the hyenas!

Oupa