Femur or Stick?

In preparation for a construction project at my office compound, the lovely palm trees were chopped down and the courtyard has been dug up. Resting on the pile of dirt this afternoon after the workers left is something that looks like a long bone. Cow leg? Human femur? Or maybe just a suspiciously shaped stick? There are some ropes up and I can’t get close enough to take a better look in my skirt and nice office shoes. I’m awfully tempted though. This is the kind of place were it could conceivably be a femur. There are some chips and shards laying around it that look like the same substance, whatever it is. If it is a human femur, would the workers just have left it? Possibly.

What if they disturbed an ancient Indian burial ground causing my office to be haunted with evil spirits? So far nothing evil has happened, but shortly after I noticed the femur I did have some chatty folks pop in for a tad longer than I would have liked them to stay. It didn’t even register as mildly annoying, but maybe the spirits are just warming up.

Despite the sadness of chopping down such nice palm trees, it was a pretty cool scene to watch. It took about a week for the trees to come down. A guy would spend a day at the top of one, whacking off palm fronds with a machete. Then some guys started chopping at the trunk, with machetes as well. When the first tree came down it landed just inches from my office door, smashing a concrete drainage trench that’s going to be replaced anyway. For the second tree, I guess they decided against possible building damage (the second tree was much larger) and they used Burundian Rope Technology to control the fall. They tied a rope to the top of the tree and sent one guy about halfway up it to start chopping (avec un machete, bien sur). The other ten guys stood by the end of the rope on the ground and when the tree started to fall they yanked it in the most convenient direction. They then spent a day digging the stump out of the ground.

It’s been fun having something to watch outside my office window, even though a nice courtyard is being replaced by a concrete building. In these quiet moments at the end of the day I can contemplate femurs.

New posts at Confessions of a Book Addict and What I Eat. Check 'em out!

You know what really grinds my gears? G-8 Edition

You know what really grinds my gears? Conferences held by world leaders to discuss the bad economy and saving the environment that are expensive and have ridiculous carbon footprints just in the amount of jet fuel used to get everyone there.

A few months ago, what was it, 20 leaders who gathered together in London? And this week the G-8 was held in Italy.

They should be leading by example. If they're going to talk about the greatness of renewable energy and reducing carbon footprints, why not have a contest to see which biotech company can develop the greatest solar-powered video conferencing system, and put it to the ultimate test by actually using it. What better way to stimulate innovation in a field they all say they promote and save everyone a lot of money at the same time?

 

Really, what is coming out of these conferences? What is being accomplished? Everyone talks about the good things they want to do, but where are the actions? If they're going to sit around talking about pledges, the least they could do is sit around at home so that they don't look quite so showy.

Every world leader should be forced to take one of those "stay-cations" I've heard so much about. They could promote tourism and service industries in their own capital cities. I think it's lovely that the Obama daughters got to make real gelatto in Italy, but there are plenty of ice cream crafters in the D.C. area who I'm sure would give them the same opportunity. And it would help a small, local business. If only the Secret Service would let them use the Metro, for the real D.C. experience.

Les Fourmis Militaires

Mike left early this morning to meet a friend for a tennis game and from the front yard I could hear him and the guards having an animated discussion but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I went about my coffee-drinking and blog-reading and forgot about it until later, after Mike got home and we were ready to leave for work. “The guards moved the chicken coop,” Mike said. “It’s been overrun by ants.”

Upon opening the front door, we were greeted in the driveway by a small, narrow trench, filled with not just any ants, but army ants. You may have heard about them; they’re also called driver ants, safari ants, or saifu. They are the ants known for destroying anything in their path, particularly infirmed animals and even people who cannot avoid them. The chickens are fine; it looks like their feed dish, not the coop, was in the path of the ants, but the guards moved it away from the trail as a precaution in case the ants change their minds.

Despite all the stories of destruction, these guys (or gals I should probably say) are pretty fascinating to watch. They’ve created a windy trail across the driveway and through the yard and it seems to have sprung up overnight. They certainly weren’t there last night when we came home from work. Standing there and admiring them for too long, the soldier ants left the trail to check us out; they defend the trail and you’d better not get in their way. You can see the larger soldier ants herding the smaller worker ants through the protective trench. Luckily, even the largest ant is much smaller than we are, so a big step backward was sufficient defense.

We are having them fumigated. Our gardener found the nest, and it’s very close to the house, much too close for my comfort. I just hope they don’t change their minds and head in to the house before we can get them taken care of.

Written with information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siafu. The photo is mine.

Kittens Can't Fly (It Doesn't End Well)

I could have sworn I’d posted about the kittens last December, but a little jog down memory lane / blog archive shows that I did not. I think I probably tried to write about it several times, but it was too painful.

Just before Christmas, Mike burst into my office at the end of the day to pick me up and said, “Grab the camera! It’s raining kittens!”

“Wha?”

I did grab my camera and I ran outside after him. Apparently a Momma cat had stuffed her kittens in the roof of my office building for safe keeping, only one of them fell out and the other two were teetering close to the edge, so they weren’t so safe. The one who fell was fine. Mike found a ladder and pulled the other two out. We decided the best thing to do was put them in a box on the ground below their roof nest. If Momma was coming back for them, she’d be able to find them easily and pull them out of the box.

The next morning we arrived at work with bowls for water and some canned food, just in case the kittens were still there. One kitten was in the box. One kitten, the one who’d fallen off the roof, was wandering around the parking lot a few yards from the box. The third kitten was gone. It was the last day of work before the office closed down for the long Christmas weekend. It was obvious that Momma wasn’t coming back, but these kittens were way too young to be left alone. I couldn’t leave them in the parking lot for three days to be picked up by hawks or attacked by cats that weren’t their Momma. For that last day of work I brought them in to my office. They teetered and squawked and drank some milk and water. Everyone came to visit them, but as much as I talked them up, no one offered to adopt them. I decided to bring them home for the weekend to live on our porch and then on Monday I’d bring them back and raise them as office cats.

We created a nice little home for the kittens on our porch. We found a bigger box for them to sleep in, and they enjoyed napping curled up right on top of each other. They were eating and they were following Mike around whenever he was outside. The one who’d fallen was definitely the stronger, more adventurous one. I wanted to name them Blisters and Crumpet, after David Sedaris’s elf names in “The Santaland Diaries.”

I never should have named them. When we got home from dinner on Christmas Day night… let’s just say they were decidedly ex-kittens. We don’t know what happened, but perhaps there was something wrong we couldn’t see but their mother could and that’s why she left them. I was so sad. They were just stupid little furballs that I’d only known for 3 days but I’d so wanted to do the right thing in bringing them home. Nature is harsh, and Africa nature is especially harsh. I tried to console myself with the circle of life and all that stuff. But it took me awhile to stop being sad because so many people asked about them at work the next Monday morning.

Fast forward to this week. Not a kitten in sight at my office until yesterday morning. The one I found yesterday was a little bit older than the previous kittens. He was walking around the parking lot crying, but scampering away from any person that went near him. He seemed reasonably strong and healthy. A coworker had decided to bring him home at the end of the day. But when I returned to my office after lunch yesterday… another ex-kitten. Even though he seemed strong enough, it appeared he’d fallen off the roof, close to where the original kittens had been stashed. How he got back up onto the roof is beyond any of us.


Today there’s another kitten. It’s stuck in the ceiling above a coworker’s desk. We started hearing it hours ago and haven’t yet figured out how to reach it. There’s no ASPCA or Animal Control officer to call here. We are our own Animal Cops Bujumbura.

Why does this Momma cat keep stuffing her kittens in the roof?

Mousebird TV

A few weeks ago I woke up, looked out the window, and noticed that I could no longer see the top of our largest papaya tree. I went outside onto the terrace for a better look. The tree had fallen down overnight. Even closer inspection showed that the tree had probably been diseased, as the trunk had become soft and spongy.

We weren't that concerned about the papayas, even though it was a pretty cool-looking tree. We have other papaya trees. What we liked best about that specific tree was that it was a popular hangout for a band of speckled mousebirds. These short, fat little birds have a tufted head and a long tail. They are a chatty bunch, chirping and squawking all day long on their branches. The mousebirds like to hang upside down from a papaya, digging in to it to eat the seeds. Since we moved here we've spent a lot of time sitting on the terrace watching the mousebirds in that tree.

But now, with the favored tree gone, we expected to not see much of them anymore. Most of the papaya trees are far from our terrace, except one. We thought that one would be too close to the house for the mousebirds. Low and behold last Sunday afternoon, I looked up from the couch to see five mousebirds sitting in that closest papaya tree, chirping and bouncing and eating seeds. Mousebird viewing from the comfort of my own couch! Of course, I was trying to get some work done and the little buggers were pretty distracting. But I couldn't bring myself to shoo them away.

Because of the proximity to the house, the mousebirds only hang out in that tree on quiet afternoons, usually when I'm being quiet because I'm trying to get work done. 

(Image from E.J. Photo)

New Addition

I have a new addition to my little corner of the blogosphere. Confessions of a Book Addict is where I've started indulging in my book obsession. I love to read and I was inspired by a recent post at The Mummy Chronicles to start writing about my reading. 

Check it out, subscribe, bookmark, comment, enjoy!