Thursday, August 22, 2013

Of chickens and safaris


Everyone, it seems, likes the new walkways.
     I only have about 28' of walkway constructed and it's not straight or leveled yet, but all the creatures in my yard utilize it: chickens, dachshunds, and me.  That gives me the motivation to keep hammering, sawing, etc.  I do have a finished picture in my head movie.
 But how, you may wonder, will Aimee link this photo of her chickens with a memory from her long ago trip to Africa?  Keep reading...
     Here I am, journaling on a camp cot on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 1995, three years before I purchased my first computer, a see-through, grape colored Macintosh.  Oh, and I'm wearing a homemade shirt, lol.
     A man named Pascal was our consummate safari guide: professional, knowledgeable, unobtrusive while we clicked photos of every animal and insect we came across.  He spoke English with a mesmerizing accent that turned the word "leopard" into "lay-o-pod" as he regaled us with hunting tales over open-air dinners on the Serengeti.  Of course, none of us had any interest in shooting an African animal to death but we listened, rapt, nonetheless.
     One morning, heading out for a day of wildlife viewing, we came across a pride of lions walking down the middle of the gravel road; they only moved off into the grass when we got close enough to potentially bump them.  
     I asked Pascal, "Why are the lions walking in the middle of the road?" thinking they, as proud beasts, should prefer their grassy habitat.
     Pascal answered slowly, in that accent, "You see, they do not like the dew."
     Sometimes it's hard for anyone to resist the allure of that path of least resistance.

2 comments:

  1. Why are you building the walkways in your yard?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jennifer, that is an excellent question!
    My backyard is infested with a vining weed called cats claw that cannot be eradicated by any means within my realm. Most of my backyard is covered in weed barrier and mulch and I have used stones to contain the boundaries but chickens don't heed boundaries. They dig around the stones until they sink, mulch goes everywhere, weeds creep in, you get the picture.
    The elevated walkways give me a chicken-proof boundary and an easy border to use the weed whacker along. :-) Love you!

    ReplyDelete