Bring on the Eco Goats!
INVASIVE plants are a curse. They choke the local vegetation, they choke our rivers
and destroy the natural habitat. Many of them came to South Africa in the horse
fodder imported during the Anglo-Boer War.
Huge amounts are budgeted by conservation agencies every year for the clearing of
alien vegetation. Yet lantana and other noxious species seem to encroach steadily
on our wilderness areas.
Tempers get frayed. Diifferent organisations accuse each other of not doing their job
properly. A local NGO recently took a government department to court over its failure
to clear alien vegetation.
But could the answer be staring us in the face? Is there anything at all that a goat will
not eat? I know they consider Y-fronts and such garments an absolute delicacy but,
when hungry enough and in the absence of Y-fronts and ladies' bras, they will eat
anything.
A fellow in America named Brian Knox has tumbled to it. He has a herd of about 70
goats that absolutely thrive on munching alien vegetation. Poison ivy, multiflora rose,
bittersweet – they munch it with gusto.
He calls them the Eco Goats and he hires them out to clear vast areas that have
been invaded by alien species.
Eco Goats – what a beautifully simple yet elegant solution. Remember where you
read it first.
Church bells
ORANGES and lemons ... the church bells will peal out across Durban next
Monday – for a full four hours in fact. On the bellropes will be not just the local
ringers but a group from England who are on a "bellringing safari".
Gail and Bob Carter, and their associate David Kelly, specialise in taking
groups on international bellringing tours.
They have with them a group 28 people who combine visits to game parks
and other attractions with ringing bells wherever they can.. Another group of
18 are bellringing in Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Gail and Bob have organised 14 international bellringing holidays over the
past 30 years. They first brought a group to Africa in 1998.
Not every church is equipped with the bells for their ringing skills. South Africa
has only nine belltowers, and two of them are in Durban – St Paul's, in the
CBD (eight bells) and St Mary's, Greyville (10 bells).
Bellringing (campanology, to use the posh term) is a very specialised craft.
Hang on to the bellrope too long and you find yourself being hoisted up the
belltower.
Bob, Gail and David have teamed up with the local ringers and they plan to
give Durban a treat on Monday, from 9 to 11am at St Paul's and from 4 to
6pm at St Mary's.
Space research
THE Nasa fellows have been very active lately, discovering planets that could
conceivably support life as we know it. They are located in what they call the
"Goldilocks zone"- not too hot, not too cold – a few hundred light years away.
Key to it all seems to be the Kepler space telescope, which is able to peer into
the most distant recesses of outer space.
It recalls the lines:
Scintillate, scintillate, globul vivivic,
Fane would I fathom thy nature specific,
Loftily poised in the ther capacious,
Faintly resembling a gem, carbonaceous.
Another version:
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Buses
A NEW ditty is all the rage at the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties:
You put your bus service in,
You put your bus service out,
You put your bus service in
And then you put it out.
You do the Hokey-Cokey,
You turn it inside out,
That's what it's all about!
The lyrics come originally from the eThekwini Council Exco minutes. They
lend themselves to an exuberant dance step often seen in the buffet queue at
city hall.
Tailpiece
THREE language professors are strolling through town when they spot a
group of ladies in fishnet tights, plying their trade on a street corner.
"Ah," says one. "A flourish of strumpets."
"A jam of tarts," says another.
"An anthology," says the third.
"An anthology?"
"An anthology of prose."
Last word
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore
never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould
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