Eavesdropping

I was at an Imax cinema with a friend from Europe who was over for a visit. She was hanging around the lobby area where there was a gift shop. I went and stood in line, not liking to take sloppy seconds when it comes to seating.

Three people were in front of me. Two women and a young man around 18 years of age. I assume that one of the women was his mother (perhaps both these days).

There isn't much to do in line except eavesdrop on others and listen to their conversations. The young man was speaking to the one woman and told her that he didn't want to see Paris but he did want to see Rome, "but not with you along," he emphasized, not in a mean way, more in a "I-don't-want-my-mother-tagging-along" way.

What he said next interested me. It interested me because it was more profound than I think the young man realized. And what he said resonated within me as well.

He told her: "I don't much care for natural art. I prefer man-made art."

Given that the Imax was just outside the gates of the Grand Canyon it was obvious what he was talking about. And I totally agreed.

I don't want to say that the Grand Canyon isn't particularly unusual and visually stimulating. It is. But as I surveyed the vast canyon stretched out before me I could see it a colorful mural more than I could a natural feature.

I don't dislike natural beauty. I actually like it very much. And while I can enjoy certain natural beauties I too prefer the man-made.

I could sit at the end of an airport runway for hours and watch the majesty of planes take-off. I assume Homeland Security would quickly put a stop to that in their paranoid fits of bureaucratic harassment however.

Mother Nature comes calling

I love the wild, but I prefer it stay in the wild. I used to love going out to the bush in Africa for a hike. And, to be quite honest, didn't worry very much about what I might stumble across, unless I was near water; then I worried about crocs and hippos, both of which are quite happy to attack people and very efficient at it.

It just bothers me when the wild doesn't stay in the wild. I don't mind visiting it, I just don't want it visiting me.

Not long ago a bear was found in our general vicinity. That, I admit surprised me. I didn't even know there were bears anywhere near here, let alone in the city. Now, I'm told a mountain lion has been spotted roaming the city. I have to say, I think I liked them when they were a little more endangered, and hence less likely to come a'callin'. Much to my surprise a google news search shows quite a few mountain lion spottings around the country.

That said, America's wildlife doesn't worry as much, not compared to living in Africa. Certainly we heard of cobras being found in the neighborhood there on a fairly regular basis—far too regular. One rather large serpent made an appearance in the parking lot on my property. (Yes, there was a parking lot on the property itself, enough for about 15 cars easily.)

I had an extension being built onto the garden cottage, where I used to have a car port. The builders got all excited and the maid came running in to tell me that a very large snake had made an appearance. I rushed out to see what was happening. It had crawled through the wire fence into the hillside for the cricket pitch at the sport's club next door. What I could see, in the weeds, was the middle of the snake. It was very, very green in color, about 10 inches in diameter, and the section I could see was about 4 feet long. How much was left at the front of the snake, and how far it was to the tail, I couldn't be sure, and I had no intention of trying to get close enough to find out.

We have a baboon in the general vicinity at one point and they can be nasty creatures. I was done on the Cape, going out to one of the lighthouses when a whole bunch of tourists who had hiked up to the lighthouse came running down the hill screaming. Apparently they had stupidly walked up the hill with ice cream cones and a gang of baboons mugged them for the cones. The baboons would literally hide in the bushes and watch for people with food, they would come out, attack the people and steal the food. And to think some people didn't believe me when I said crime was rampant there.

The baboon in our area actually brought about some rather funny calls to the police. In one spotting a woman reported a hijacker hiding in the bush outside her house. It was the baboon, who generally speaking is actually less dangerous. In another case a maid at one of the houses reported a potential rapists hiding in the backyard. That baboon managed to escape capture for several months. No one is sure how it got into the city.

I worried more than most people because my house bordered on a large field area where the local sports club was located. The area behind my fence went behind four houses in total and then down to the river. I don't remember the name of the river and apparently Google maps doesn't show it. You can see it in the satellite version, but it isn't mapped. That river was wild on both sides of it pretty much the entire distance and it was perfect animal highway into the city. Still, it was the human animal who worried me most.

Wildlife encounters in the US have been mercifully few in numbers. As a young kid my family spent a summer in Florida. We rented a house not far from the Everglades themselves. There was a canal that ran behind the house. I stupidly went into the water and stepped on a snake that was under the water. That is was underwater at the time seemed to help as it pulled away and swam off. It was a water moccasin. I didn't go swimming there again. On another occasion the woman next door was sunbathing in a lounge chair and fell asleep. When she woke up she scream, and ran to my father begging him to help. Apparently an alligator had come into her yard and was sunbathing a few feet from her chair.

I did run into bears a few times, but it doesn't count. I was in the middle of the woods when that happened. Though one big beaver did scare the hell out of one day when I was in high school. We lived on the edge of a forest with a large lake area in it—the whole wild area is now suburbs, including the swimming hole. Walking out there one afternoon this massive beaver appeared on the path, it slammed its tail into the ground several times, making one very loud bang each time, and then ran into the bush. I practically wet myself as I hadn't seen it until it started slapping its tail into the dirt.

As a kid I came across garden snakes all the time near the house and used to catch them frequently, terrorizing the neighbor ladies by showing the snakes to them. Around age 7 I handed one such snake to a babysitter, who just instinctively took what I handed her. She stared at this snake in her hand and started screaming, loudly. Good thing snakes don't have ears. Her problem was she couldn't figure out what to do with the snake. She was afraid to hold it and terrified to let it go. I did find it rather funny, still do in fact. She eventually dropped it and ran. To say the least, she never would come into my room from that point on. Alas, the music teacher was not so inclined and she ended up stealing my coin collection. She probably works in the administration now.

When in Africa, I didn't mind walking the bush, but I wasn't about to camp there. I did have standards, after all. So I'd rent chalets in the various parks for the weekend. For the most part these were safe havens. But not always. I did have a photo of my travel companion feeding a piece of toast to a warthog while we sitting on the patio having breakfast. That one was unusually friendly, though skittish. The warthogs are the great cowards of the bush, though they will get very nasty if they feel cornered, otherwise they run like hell with their funny bottle brush tails sticking straight up in the air.

Monkeys, however, were a plague. One visit I was with a friend who had gone to the main lodge for something. On the way back a young boy came out of a chalet and begged him to help. Apparently the boy had left a patio door open and the monkeys had gotten into the chalet and were ripping it to pieces. The boy was around 12 and when he tried to chase them out the monkeys ganged up on him, terrorized the poor kid, and chased him out of the chalet. My friend, however, was around 6'1" and built large enough that he played rugby for fun. All he had to do was open the door and the monkey beat a quick retreat.

One chalet I rented—it was my favorite actually and I stayed there often—was off in a section of the park that was entirely private to just this chalet. I liked my privacy and usually told the resort not to send cleaning staff to do the dishes, or anything. It was down a long, private, dirt road but it was fantastic. There were three buildings in the camp and you would rent all three together. They were also built up off the ground, among the trees, so there were walkways between the three buildings with the ground about 12 feet below.

One morning, very early, a huge ruckus woke me. It seemed the monkeys were on the roof and chasing one another about rather energetically. I went outside and they disappeared into a clump of trees a bit in the distance. One of the peeked up through the branches at me and when it saw me, would quickly hide again. I then squatted down and it would pop up again. When I popped up to see it, it would squat down again. That went on for a good two minutes, like some giant teeter-totter. If my head was up, the monkey's was done. I my head was down, the monkey's was up.

On one other occasion we heard the worst possible racket coming from directly under the chalet. This was in the middle of the bush in Kwa-Zulu Natal and there were no towns or houses for miles around, no decent sized city for many miles. So when it was night it was very, very dark, especially when the moon wasn't reflecting. And that night there was no moon at all so it was pitch dark. The sound, in pitch black night, was actually quite frightening. We turned on porch lights and eventually discovered that two wildebeest were fighting under the chalet. Since they can get up to 600lbs in weight, they can do a lot of damage.

And all that brings me to posting, again, one of my favorite videos of Kruger Park, though I believe it was given a more PC name recently. Here are water buffalo being pursued by lions. The lion grabbed a small calf, as is routine for them. But before the lion get to devour the poor calf it is snatched from them by crocs lurking in the nearby waters. At this point the lion and crocs are each trying to pull the calf from the others. And then something rather amazing happens, the victims gang up on the victimizers. You have to watch it. Even if you've seen it before, it's worth seeing again.

Sometimes natural isn't that good.

The Berlin Zoo was recently the center of controversy. Now, I have walked past the Zoo more times than I can possibly remember. When I’m in Berlin the Zoo it is directly between my apartment and the main train station I use. It is five minutes from my door. But I’ve just never gone in. I’ve walked past the well known elephant gates several times a week and yet never gone through the gate.

It’s not that I don’t like animals. I like them very much. One of my favorite ways to spend a week away is to go into the African bush. I used to rent a tree lodge in the middle of a game reserve in Hluhluwe, Kwa-Zulu Natal. First, I walk around the bush in the vicinity to see what wildlife was there. Then we’d drive through the different parks and reserves looking for wild life. We spend some time at the cheetah breeding project down the road and take a drive out to the Indian ocean and walk on the beach. And then we’d head to St. Lucia estuary and cruise the estuary watching the hippos and crocs.

I’ve floated down the Zambezi at sunset watching amazing numbers of animals come to the rivers edge to drink. I remember the sun setting behind the trees and seeing majestic elephants at the river’s edge with giraffe not far behind them. I’ve seen elephants roaming by the hundreds -- and I mean somewhere between one hundred and two hundred of them.

I’ve had monkeys use my roof for games waking me in the morning and wildebeests fighting underneath the lodge keeping me awake at night. And on one occasion we were chased by a rhino -- thankfully we were driving at the time. So the reason I haven’t gone in is simple. What reason would I have to do that when I spent so much time in the African bush?

Now I have a reason. This little guy is Knut and he’s a new neighbor. And one radical animal rights nut wanted the cub left to die. Sweet guy! Knut was born in December. But his mother ignored him and his brother. The brother died. Zoo keepers decided to intervene and rescue this little fellow.

And the environmental fundamentalists went loopy over the idea. We have a pretty good idea what an environmentalists is and what a fundamentalist is but what is an environment fundamentalist? That is someone who treats nature the way the Calvinists treat God. The will of God is absolutely sovereign and we live with his edicts. The will of the Nature is absolutely sovereign and we live with her edicts. If Nature proclaims an animal should die who are we to second guess the will of this god? These are people who turn nature into a deity with the power to decide right and wrong.

A rational approach is that nature is what it is and sometimes it does good and sometimes it does bad and sometimes it needs to be slapped up the backside good and hard. The environmental fundamentalist can’t see it that way. Nature's edicts are sovereign law from throne of heaven.

And Nature said this cub was to die. Now man, according to both religions, is an evil sinner who transgresses against the will of God. In this case the transgression was in rescuing this cub and helping it survive.

Animal rights “activist” Frank Albrecht whined that hand feeding this cub, and saving it’s life, “is not species-appropriate”. Well, Frank isn’t species appropriate either. He’s clearly very inappropriate for our species but no one is advocating putting him down. Not even me though I would be tempted. Frank said: “The zoo must kill the bear.” No second guessing the will of God.

Stepped in bad publicity this ass wipe of an activist tried to back peddle a bit. He said his view was complicated and nuanced and that what he really meant was the zoo should have allowed the cub to die not actively kill it now that is healthy and happy. “If a polar bear mother rejected the baby, then I believe the zoo must follow the instincts of natures. In the wild, it would have been left to die.” See, what I mean. You must never second guess nature. Fundamentalism! In the Greens like this man fundamentalism is just as vicious and deadly as when it drives religionists.

In fact I consider a lot of people like Albrecht to be religious. They aren’t scientists but a cult. They worship nature and want only the “natural”. It’s pretty much rubbish as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to take Frank out to St. Lucia for swim and have Nature pass judgement on him. I can assure him that the crocs would do something very natural with him, of course they may have to wait until the hippos have finished mincing him for them.

Albrecht does not understand that nature is sometimes brutal and foolish. So are we, but lets not endow nature with some divine goodness. Nature is not always good. It is often cruel. Cultists like Albrecht have distorted views of reality but that is typical of fundamentalists. Nature sometimes screws up and does awful things. There is no divine intelligence in nature. It doesn’t work that way. There is no beneficent will behind nature. It is. And sometimes when it acts we have to act and undo what Nature has decreed because it screwed up.

I remember December 26th, 2004 very well. For the previous week I had been desperately trying to book a holiday away that Christmas. And I called every travel agent I could to find to see if there was anything available in Phuket. I had never been and I wanted to share something special with someone I love very much.

I tried every outlet I could but nothing. So I weighed the options and decided we’d go to Sydney for the weekend instead. We got a great room near the top of the Novotel overlooking Darling Harbour. We flew in on Christmas Day and spent the day walking around. I remember turning on the news the next day and seeing the horrific news that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by a tsunami. I was thankful that the resorts in Phuket couldn’t offer us a room otherwise that’s where we would have been. I wondered about the many people who were on the plane for part of our journey, it was Air Thailand, and many of them were headed onwards to Phuket.

That tsunami was Nature speaking. Should we have allowed those people to die? We intervene in nature all the time and we ought to do so. Every time we innoculate a child against a disease we interfere with nature. Nature saddled me with bad eyes and man gave me glasses so I can see. We don’t forage in the woods for roots and berries. We grow food. It’s unnatural.


And it’s good. I’m glad that nature doesn’t always get things the “natural” way. And if this polar bear understood what is going on he’d appreciate that the zoo keepers prevented nature from taking it’s course. I have always argued that the view of nature taken by these environmental fundamentalists is inherently cruel. And I’m glad Mr. Albrecht spoke out as he did illustrating that point so well.

If you wish to look at photos and videos of this lovely cub you can do so on the Zoo’s web site. And I think that the first nice Spring weekend after I get back to Berlin will be spent walking down to the Zoo and visiting this little fellow. And when I do so I’ll be thinking how great it was that someone had the wisdom to step in and stop the tyranny of nature.