The season turns
Spring is sprung,
Da grass is riz,
I wonder where da boidies is?
Da boids is on da wing, or so I hoid –
But dat's absoid,
Da wings is on da boid.
AH YES, the Bronx Spring. And our spring is also here. It starts officially only on September 1 but the Cape canaries are here already, singing their hearts out in the garden – and you can't fool those Cape canaries.
All over Europe and in much of the rest of the world, they're sombrely marking 100 years since the outbreak of the great calamity that still reverberates today.
A hundred years ago yesterday, after the Austro-Hungarians and others had been scrapping in the Balkans for a month after the assassination of the Archduke of Austria in Sarajevo, and war had been spreading like a domino effect as various European treaties kicked in, Britain declared war on Germany for invading neutral Belgium. The British Empire was at war – and that included us.
The results of that horrific war are still with us, Most major trouble spots today can be traced back to it. The Ukraine, where Putin is trying to put together again the Tsarist empire. The Middle East, where the Ottoman Empire collapsed and was dismembered after siding with Germany and Austria-Hungary.
I once read a survivor's account of the Battle of Delville Wood. When the guns at last fell silent, the shattered, smoking wood was flooded at evening with birdsong.
Let's keep listening to those Cape canaries.
Geckos
RECENTLY we discussed a Russian spacecraft that has been loaded with geckos so that scientists can study their sex lives in conditions of weightlessness.
Reader Gregor Woods says he himself has studied the sex life of the gecko.
"After many years in Namibia, I returned to KwaZulu-Natal to find it overrun with geckos that had not been here before I left. Think about it - you never saw them in houses when you were a boy.
"I was a wildlife nut from early childhood, and knew every creature in the garden, and I can assure you there were no geckos here during the 1950s or early sixties.
"On my inquiry, the Natal Parks Board informed me that the gecko was indigenous to Zululand. The species naturally remained there because it could not cross the many east-running rivers on the north coast.
"However, once the harbour at Richards Bay was developed, geckos invaded the piles of timber stacked on the harbour wharf. The geckos were loaded on to ships in timber cargoes bound for Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, where they were offloaded.
"Their proliferation is testimony to their extraordinary sex lives. In 1988 I bought a house in Westville with tongue-and-groove plank ceilings which had a few gaps providing unlimited thoroughfare for the geckos.
"A study of their sex lives was practically forced on me. When two rival males fight for the favours of a lady gecko, they make a loud clicking noise with their mouths. When they are on the pelmet in your bedroom, they keep you awake.
"When it comes to foreplay, the male faces the female almost nose to nose, and nods his head once. She responds with a single nod of her head. I have not been able to determine whether they also wink at each other. The nodding procedure is repeated two or three times, and that's it.
"It works every time. I have never seen a suitor rejected. Hardly my idea of molten passion, but I suppose it's all right if you're a gecko."
This is most interesting. Only the other night in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties, a lady who looked much like a leguaan kept nodding at me and winking. I realise now I had a narrow escape.
Bargain
NEWS from the gentle county of Suffolk, England. A fellow I know there says a sign went up in the front window of a house in his village: "FOR SALE - Computer and Encyclopaedia, both in very good condition.
Reason for selling: No longer needed. Got married. Wife knows EVERYTHING ... with backup server called 'Mother In Law'."
Tailpiece
"A FANCY bra for the missus, please."
"What size?"
"Seven and a half."
"Seven and a half? Where do you get a size that that?"
"I measured with me 'at."
Last word
In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
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