Bush Wacking

I’m starting to have my doubts whether spending R13 000 each (a chunk of my pension) on a 28 day Field Guide Course is a good idea for me. I’ve checked out job offers for couples at Game Lodges and they seem to want the guy to take the people into the bush to look at the bokkies and they want the chick to stay home and answer the phone. Probably rightly so since imagine me out there in a jeep with 6 Americans in the back going Oh My God, Oh My God as I disappear into the sunset without a clue as to where I’m going. I rely heavily on GPS and without my glasses I wouldn’t know the difference between a baobab or a boa constrictor.

One of the subjects the course covers is Astronomy. My current knowledge of the stars is that if you join the dots then you can outline pictures of Greek Gods and scorpions but you have to stretch your imagination big time and I know the southern cross is supposed to help you find your way but I’m not quite sure how it works. I mean if I follow a star like the 3 musketeers did, the direction seems kinda vague. I’d just keep going and going in a straight line as if I was chasing the end of a rainbow to the end of nowhere. Can’t see how that would get me back to the lodge after a night of game viewing with 6 Americans fretting in the back seat.

Another subject is Amphibians. I think that’s creatures who live in the water but who aren’t fish. And I have a feeling its limited to fresh water i.e. an octopus is not amphibian but a frog is. I’d need some brushing up on that I suspect.

Reptiles. Crocodiles are dangerous and you can make handbags out of them but I’m not sure what they do with the pointy bits. Face inwards possibly? Digging for a tampon in the bottom of your handbag would be a mission mind you.

I’ve just checked - another subject is Arthropods. And here I thought that was the name of a fatal disease. After reading further I realized its spiders and insects. Funny, I’ve been pondering about Mosquito’s lately. As far as I know it’s the female who bites you and sucks your blood for a meal. So what I’ve been wondering is what does the male mosquito eat to survive? The female? I mean what species, (other than humans where the male can survive on meat and the female on chocolate) do the males eat one thing and the females eat a different food type. I’m puzzled.

Actually all the subjects offered in the Field Guide Course do intrigue me. I’d like to know more about the moon and how it magnetically pulls the water in my body towards it. I’d love to know more about animal hierarchy – I think animals are way more intelligent than humans realize. I’m also intrigued by mans development through the stone and iron age. Learning about botany (possibly even lobotomy) wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I think it will come in handy when the budget is stretched and we need to know which leaves are edible to chuck in the stew.

So doing a field guide course would be interesting and maybe I wouldn’t be expected to be all gung-ho and carry a machine gun over my shoulder to protect the Americans from a charging rhinoceros. Mind you it sounds more appealing than hanging a toilet brush over my shoulder and answering the phones.

I’ll think about my options some more while I try and figure out where the heck Mpumalanga is. I still work on the old system of Transvaal and Free State so I think I have enough stuff to think about before I find time to count the legs on spiders and insects to see what category they fall into. Next week I’ll get the magnifying glass out cos I’d be expected to know the difference between a millipede and a centipede and as far as I can remember we’re talking a lot of legs here.