Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for March 29, 2014

You have just deflated Alix’ opinion of South Africa, Evie To her way of thinking there should be lots of lions and other wild animals in a place named Africa… ;)

Check out ‘Madam and Eve’ (they dropped their website but are on Facebook. Lots of humorous commentary on South African politics, economics, society, and some animals. NOTE: a Pretoria Prawn is NOT a shrimp, but it is big and UGH-LY!!!! EEEEEK!

maybe not

Now, of course, I just have to get out all my old Madam and Eve books and have a glorious read this Saturday afternoon in sunny South Africa.

Evie your telling the wrong granddaughter about the mall. Alix wants to hear about wildlife.

Holly will be happy. I feel bad for Alix. It is a sad comment also on the fact that so many big cats are disappearing.

Asking about bears (at least) is a reasonable question in some US communities. Ask around New Jersey, California, New Mexico or Colorado for starters. Deer are grazing in San Antonio neighborhoods. Critters are everywhere! :-)

We do have bears here in Southern California, some insist on coming down from the mountains and raiding our trashcans. One famous one had to be relocated from Los Angeles to a San Diego bear sanctuary to avoid his being put down. (big bear!). Also, we have lots of coyotes. I live in the middle of a city of 300,000 people and opened up my garage door the other day to meet a very slim female coyote. She lives somewhere in the neighborhood and was scouting for a few unattended pets to feed her babies. Tough life out there!

And to think that my first thought was, “Is she SKYPING?” if her recipient can hear and see her conversation through the computer. If her recipient wants to hear about lions, zebras and giraffes, she should have gone to Tasmania, in East Africa. Tigers live in India.

Which is sad.

I regularly have visitors from other parts of the US who ask that type of question. In my case it is valid. I have seen both bears and deer in my yard. There were reports of a mountain lion in the neighborhood, but I never got to see it.

However, I agree with you. The only things the media shows about Africa are wild animals, tribes-people in traditional garb, or starvation and war. My mother-in-law got us a National Geographic kids series in which the characters toured different continents. There were no humans shown when it came to Africa. It may be disappointing for Alix, but it is important to learn that far off places still contain people living ordinary lives (cultural differences aside).

We went to a Maori cultural performance in New Zealand last year. I was thrilled that as they displayed their heritage, the performers took time to point out that their daily lives are in apartments and modern homes, at Starbucks and on Facebook, not in the traditional clothes and the buildings of long ago.

Thank you. I misremembered it as Pretoria. In any case, they are still UGHHHHH-LY!!!!