Chomping at the ‘net

Twenty-four more hours without Internet.
Under normal circumstances, I’d pack up my laptop and relocate to a local café where Internet access comes with a cup of coffee and a cream scone.
Under pandemic conditions, cafés are closed – and I’m counting hours and minutes on fingers and toes.
Internet withdrawal. Forced by circumstances to refrain from Trump bashing.
But bashing is Trump’s bread and butter. Who is his latest victim?
Is Dr Fauci still around?
Dr Birx?
What's Bheki Cele up to?
Has Jared saved the world yet?
Enquiring minds want to know.

***

Scan of my cell phone reports 4,546 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in South Africa (and increase of 185) with 88 deaths; 168,643 tests performed.

***

Laptop open, I sipped my morning coffee and ponder the pandemic.
Yesterday, one live-in domestic worker reported a member of her extended family had died quickly and unexpectedly. She had no details about the cause of death. New lockdown rules mandate no travelling to attend funerals.

Wrapped in worry, I barely noticed two early bird hahdidahs catching early worms on the lawn.
Pandemic consciousness has elevated the once-ordinary to the now-extraordinary and I leaped for my camera. Clumsily, I snuck to the window…and alarmed both hahdidahs.
They took off to settle on the lower lawn.
I crept outside, checked my gumboots for spiders before pulling them on, set the camera to video, and filmed … recording only distinctive hahdidah cries and tail feathers.
Thanks to lockdown, I’m reminded that life lives – and I’m part of it.

***

A saga of giblets

Giblets are what’s left of chicken carcasses after removing the choice bits – breasts, thighs, drumsticks, etc.
My mother buys bulk packaged giblets from a big-box store to feed her dogs.
Giblet procurement, once easy, has become increasingly difficult. Giblets are an affordable food for financially stressed, hungry humans.

Before she was advised to stop driving, my mother purchased, every three months, dozens of packs of frozen giblets she stored in two dedicated chest freezers. She also purchased a case of six 2-liter bottles of her favorite wine. She transported these in her economy-size Toyota Yaris hatchback, along with three dogs she delivered, and picked up afterwards, to “their favorite groomer.” (One was Scruffy: blind in one eye, deaf, emitting a one-tone bark every 7 to 9 seconds. Yes, I timed him.)
Giblet and wine purchasing, and doggie delivery/pick up became tasks of Dutiful Daughter. At first, this enterprise appealed to my sense of the ridiculous and I made several runs.
Then I balked.
Forty-five minutes driving a Yaris chock-a-block with frozen food, a case of wine, 3 uncaged dogs, and my mother in the passenger seat in a country with among the world’s highest rates of road fatalities?
No. No. And no.

I retrieved my mother’s decades-old made-in-China Chana bakkie (pick-up) and, before returning to California, made one last wine-and-giblet run. Side trip to the doggie groomer not included.

My wonderful liveaboard California lifestyle reminded me how much I enjoyed life and, by my January return to South Africa, I’d decided against further death-defying giblet-jaunts in the Chinese Chana.
But, big question: with giblet supplies running low in the chest freezers, where to buy more?

Lockdown complicates the giblet hunt
The big-box store's online shop sells and delivers only non-perishables.
The local butchery (“too expensive,” says my mother) sells only gizzards, no giblets, nor can they locate any.
The local grocery store sells only Pet Mince.
My mother explains that her dogs (IMHO, all “pavement specials” that is, mongrels) “don’t like” gizzards or Pet Mince.
My internal conversation? “Tough shit. These days, people eat giblets. Let the damned dogs sacrifice!”
Nevertheless, Dutiful Daughter drives to the veterinary clinic to purchase salve for a dog’s skin irritation. I asked the receptionist if she knew where to purchase giblets.
Miraculously, she had a friend with “pure breed dogs” that eat only giblets.
Back home, I called this friend and, yes, indeed, she could recommend a butcher who specializes in “halal and other odd things like giblets.”
Location of his butchery? “Little Lagos.”

***

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The distinctive breathless quacking and hissing of Egyptian Geese had me scanning the area with binoculars.
Four roosted atop a distant electrical pylon.
Hadidah ibis frequently roost on the pylons bordering this property. Woolly neck storks occasionally roost there, too. I’ve never spotted Egyptian Geese on this pylon.

Enquiring minds
Do Egyptian Geese boycott the closer pylon? Or, have hahdidahs somehow insulted Egyptian Geese and created a rift? Vice versa?
Does pecking order decree different roosting spots for different birds?
Do birds of a feather flock together to intimidate birds of a different feather?

***

Lockdown gifts humans with time, and my neighbor spends his racing pigeons.
The wonderful sound of dozens of wings whirring overhead draws my attention to the communication between those aloft and those earthbound.
With his birds flying in high circles, the sedentary human below waves a black flag.
Then, the human lays down the flag, and, slowly, perhaps reluctantly, the birds return to the coop.
How did this language develop? Which came first: the egg or the flag?
Perhaps lockdown will gift me an opportunity to inquire into the ways of bird and man.
Meanwhile, the mysteries of not knowing….

***

I suspect when I’m afloat on my houseboat, my mother convinces the domestic workers to provide only her preferred cuisine: multiple snacks of Rooibos tea and Romany Cream biscuits and Jungle Oats for lunch and dinner.
I try to insist my mother eat a daily serving of vegetables and a fruit/yogurt/olive oil-based smoothie. Insisting works less than half the time.
The domestic workers cook for themselves – and for the gardener when he’s here.
I cook for myself and recycle what I can, from coffee grounds - sprinkled on acidic-soil-loving roses, avocado trees, hydrangeas – to food waste.
I carried out the fortnightly composting today, starting with repacking the sink hole with garden clippings. This hole has an endless capacity for garden debris – unless it’s home to a garden-debris-consuming dragon?

After the sink hole, I moved Stage 3 material – mature compost – into the garden. I moved Stage 2 material – almost composted food scraps - into Stage 3. Then I moved Stage 1 material - fresh food waste – into the Stage 2 receptacle, and covered and wired it shut, out of reach of curious monkeys and hungry scavengers.
Finally, I weeded the entire area to discourage seeding of black jacks and invasive khaki weeds.

Another successful lockdown completed - two days sans Internet - with sanity intact.

Read Week 1  | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4  |  Week 5

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