Shocking news - except to Africans

 

I note the following news report.

A South African hotelier is believed to have been eaten by a 15ft crocodile after human remains were found inside the swollen reptile.

The animal was shot from a helicopter and airlifted from the crocodile-infested Komati River in a daring police operation before a post-mortem examination was carried out.

A ring was found inside the belly of the 500kg apex predator and is thought to have belonged to Gabriel Batista, 59.

The businessman was swept away in floodwaters while trying to drive across the Komati River in the north-east of the country a week ago.

Investigators will carry out DNA tests on the bones and flesh found inside the crocodile.

. . .

 As well as the body parts, six different types of shoes were found, according to Capt Potgieter.

There's more at the link, including images.

The comments from friends and acquaintances in the USA have been amusing.  A surprising number are absolutely horrified that a man who'd just escaped drowning had promptly been eaten by a wild animal.  It's almost as if it was unfair, somehow.  They weren't comforted by my assurance that in large parts of Africa, that sort of thing happens on an almost daily basis.  As for the "six different types of shoes" . . . yeah, I'd say Mr. Batista was far from the only human meal that croc had enjoyed.  Local tribespeople were doubtless greatly relieved by the news that it had been caught.

Rural Africa remains a very dark continent, filled with very deadly animals.  Actual examples:

• A man visits a neighboring village, gets drunk, and decides to walk back to his village along a deserted path at night.  Halfway there, a passing leopard finds him and decides that he'll make a satisfactory supper.
• A man goes looking for a lost cow along a river bank.  A hippo, grazing on long grass a short distance away, decides that she doesn't want him (or anyone else) getting between her and the water, which is her security blanket.  She bites him in half.
• A hunter gets too close to an elephant, which promptly tramples him into pink slush in the mud.  He isn't able to shoot her in time to save himself, and in the stress of the moment, only wounds her.  While she's recovering from the bullet wound, she kills several local villagers who get too close to her, on the general principle that if a man did this to her, she's going to presume that any man she sees is going to try to do likewise.
• An armored personnel carrier is driving through thick brush and trees.  The vehicle commander is standing with his head and shoulders outside the turret, trying to see through the thick growth to plot his course.  A boomslang (tree snake) is jarred off its branch by the APC as it brushes against the tree.  It falls onto the vehicle commander, bites him (injecting a full dose of poison, which proves fatal) and then falls through the turret hatch into the interior of the vehicle, biting two other soldiers before it's killed by a rain of rifle butts.  The two survive, but only because it had already injected much of its venom into the vehicle commander.  They're sick for several weeks.

All those incidents were personally known to me.  I was nearby when they all happened.  That's the norm in wild rural Africa.  The cities can be a lot tamer, but not always.  A few decades ago, I remember two leopards who set up house in the concrete basement and utility spaces of the biggest soccer stadium in Soweto, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people.  They lived off local cats and dogs.  When their presence was deduced (due to the rapid decline in other local pets and wildlife, and the presence of their tracks after rain) the local police were asked to hunt them down and shoot them.  Freely translated and interpreted, the local cops' reply was along the lines of, "You want us to go into a concrete labyrinth, with no light at all, to hunt two big cats that can see in the dark?  Oh, hell, no!  Here, take our rifles and show us how it's done.  We'll watch.  In fact, we'll sell tickets on pay-per-view!"

I'm very sorry for Mr. Batista, and for his family, of course . . . but that's Africa:  and in Africa, the good guys don't always win.  It goes with the territory.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 310

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I've found that a lot of people know the more "common" songs by Jethro Tull, but most are unaware that there are literally dozens of less-well-known pieces out there.  Some are outtakes, some are from concept albums that were never released as such, and some appeared in other channels.  Many of them are a lot of fun, and I enjoy listening to them.

Today I'd like to bring you four of Jethro Tull's less-well-known pieces.  The first, originally intended for their album "Broadsword and the Beast" but left off the final set, is called "Motoreyes".  This recording is from the compilation album "20 Years of Jethro Tull".

Next, here's the theme music from the 1984 Channel 4 television series "Blood Of The British".  David Palmer wrote most of the music for the series, but Jethro Tull performed the title song, "Coronach".

From their double CD "Nightcap:  The Unreleased Masters 1973-1991", here's "Rosa On The Factory Floor".

And finally, again from their "20 Years of Jethro Tull" compilation, here's one of my favorites:  "Part Of The Machine".

Please let me know in Comments if these songs were new to you, and if you'd like more of Jethro Tull's less-well-known music.  If so, I'll put up a few more posts like this.

Peter

Another fiddly Friday (medically speaking)

 

I have an early appointment with a pain management specialist today, so I haven't been able to put up my usual longer blog post.  If I have time later, I may do so.

In the meantime, here are two cartoons from the past week or so that caught my eye and made me laugh.  Click either image to be taken to the cartoon's Web page for a larger view.

Wish me luck!

Peter

Another perspective on the latest Trump assassination attempt

 

A little late, perhaps, but worth repeating nonetheless.  From Peter Girnus, "a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner".

I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

. . .

2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

. . .

I have produced eleven of these dinners ... I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

There's more at the link.

Mr. Girnus' post on X (formerly Twitter) has so far attracted over 4,000 replies and comments.  Click over there to read them if you're interested.  I particularly liked his reply to one comment:

They took the wine at a pace that suggested familiarity with hotel evacuation corridors. That's not elite behavior. That's logistics under pressure. I've seen worse at a Marriott fire alarm in Phoenix.

Word!

Needless to say, my opinion of most alleged journalists has not been improved by this fiasco . . .

Peter