I have driven down highways in southern Brazil, for hours, past fields of abacaxi of a vastness incomprehensible to people who don’t know of the largeness of the southern skies. And yet the best pineapple I’ve ever had has been bought in a plastic punnet box in a supermarket in England. I am profoundly ashamed of this, and of the fact that I probably am a distant relative of some of the people responsible for it.
I’m pretty sure the Germans have a word for that feeling you get when you realise the true answer to OkCupid’s “what are you doing on a typical Friday night” is “cleaning the bathroom”.
It’s the contrapositive of schadenfreude.
—Yo te quiero mucho y cuando me muera te voy a extrañar…
—Cuando te mueras no vas a sentir nada…, así que no te preocupes, extrañame ahora.
(de “Ella, los trillizos y yo”)
— Amazon customer review for “Wolf Urine Lure-32 oz”.
(Source: reddit.com)
Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #9
Snakes.
Snakes are beautiful creatures, undeserving of the scorn often heaped on them.
But one breezy evening early in the dry season, you may be quietly following the monkeys. The sun is low in the sky, and everyone is slowly settling in for the evening. The monkeys have been spotting and harassing two or three rattlesnakes daily - it’s the dry season, after all - but it’s ok because that warning is always there, you can follow the steady mobbing to its cold, beautiful, and safely distant reptilian source. At any rate, there’s nothing to worry about now… you’re on a gravel road with high visibility, there are no long grasses, and the monkeys are calm and drowsing. They always see the snakes before you do. So you stroll on. Looking up.
Until you hear something.
Something that makes you look down.
A terrifying high-speed rattle.
And a split second later, out of the corner of your eye, you see it.
It is directly between your feet.
Its mouth is open.
Its head is up.
Rearing back.
Striking.
The next thing you know, you’re on your back, a full five feet away from where you’d just been standing. Your heart is pounding out of your chest as the monkeys alarm wildly at the four-foot-long rattlesnake that, just now, narrowly missed a direct strike at your delicates.
It’s ok.
Take a deep breath (and then take another).
Scold the monkeys for, this once, having missed a snake in plain site.
And prepare for a lifetime of helpless chagrin.
Because from this moment forward, despite knowing that they will not harm you unless you absolutely ask for it, you will never see a snake (or upset a snake-sized branch in the leaf litter) again without daintily crumpling your limbs, catching your breath in your throat, and emitting the most delicate, the most timorous, the most tremulous of squeals.
BT engineer came and went. I now have broadband! And, anachronistically, an actual phone line. The engineer didn’t tell me my phone number. I could call my mobile and find out, only I don’t have a phone. The BT shop asks me for my phone number to sell me one.
