In Memorium. A.H.H.

21 January, 2009

I am standing on a sun-bleached Nature stage watching "red in tooth and claw" unfold. Male baboons have two particular habits that I could do without. First, they launch full-scale attack on all cycling females when another social group (i.e. new males) is within sight. It really must be frankly stated that they beat the shit out of those ladies. Second, some males have developed a taste for the flesh of other mammals. It is now the birthing season for many ungulates, so I am regularly witness to the horrors of being eaten alive.

Unlike the attacks on females, which males perform with an impressive commitment, the meat-eaters seem initially ambivalent. It is as if they recognize a general impulse, slow to decode its specific command. Days after my arrival here, I watched Liberty three-legged hobble with a baby hare nestled in the crook of one hand. He stopped, snuggled the stone still hare to his chest, and sat for a while before starting in on his meal. Toes first.

Thompsons ("Tommy") and Grants gazelles and their young are plentifull here. They seem as unaware of their role as prey as the baboons are of theirs as predator. When a spindly-legged newborn Tommy cupped its ears toward the baboons, I muttered shamelessly under my breath, "Run away! They are going to eat you!" The mother and the rest of the herd meandered nearby, apparently unalarmed, until it was too late. By the end of the hour, those spindles pumped tree-top air until Njugu had finished the work of splaying it inside out over a thick acacia branch, pulling out endless guts hand over bloody hand, and slurping them up like saucy spaghetti.

Death to baboon prey is just an inevitable consequence of being eaten.

The Amboseli Baboon Research Project is here as a guest of the Maasai community, a pastoralist people who eat more meat than the baboons do. These days I take comfort in their skill with a blade, grateful for their unflinching ability to kill. When they cut the throat of last weekend's dinner goat, her suffering must have been mercifully brief. This goat feast was a gift to everyone in camp and not one ounce of her went uneaten; head, hooves, liver, stomach...down the hatch. The day after the feast we were still drinking belly-fat goat-head soup. The person who paid for the goat was thanked over and over through happy slurpings and smacking lips. They are getting used to my particular brand of strangeness, so only chuckled when I gulped down my own cup of soup and said, "actually, I thank the goat."

Naja pallida (RIP) and Python natalensis

1 January 2009

"Let's see...it was on an island. And there was a snake. And the snake had legs and he could walk all around the island...yes, that's true...a snake with legs.

And the man and the woman were on the island too. And they were not very smart, but they were happy as clams. Yes...let's see...then one evening the snake was walking about the garden and he was talking to himself and he saw the woman and they started to talk. And they became friends. Very good friends.

And the woman liked the snake very much because when he talked, he made little noises with his tongue and his long tongue was licking about his lips. Like there was a little fire inside his mouth and the flame would come dancing out of his mouth. And the woman liked this very much.

And after that, she was bored with the man. Because no matter what happened...he was always as happy as a clam.

What did the snake say? Yes. What was he saying? What did he say? Ok. I will tell you...

The snake told her things about the world. He told her about the time when there was a big typhoon on the island and all the sharks came out of the water. Yes, they came out of the water and they walked right into your house with their big white teeth. And the women heard these things.

And the man came out and said, "we have to go now," and the woman did not want to go because she was a hothead. Anyway...they got into their boat and they left the island, but they never stayed anywhere very long because the woman was restless. She was a hothead.

And this is not a story my people tell. It's something I know myself. And when I do my job, I am thinking about these things. Because when I do my job, that is what I think about."

-Laurie Anderson
"Hothead"
United States Live Part IV