Tag: cosmos

TBT: Albino Giraffes Poached

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’ve had animals on the brain lately, especially dogs.  Perhaps it’s my girlfriend’s sweet German shepherd puppy, or my parents’ photogenic rat terrier; regardless, I realize I am becoming a softy for critters.

Not just the furry, charismatic ones, either:  I’m considering adding a small frog garden to my existing flower beds, as I have a number of toads and frogs that take up residence in my beds and planters already.  Giving them a murky little pond to splash about in would be fun, and might help cut down on some bugs in the yard.

So it is that I’m looking back to this horrible story from March 2020, about the poaching of two rare albino giraffes in Kenya.  In the original piece, I make quite a few wild speculations about the nature of the poachers, even implicating the 50,000 Chinese immigrants to the country.

Given that The Virus originated, most likely, in a Wuhan virology lab—suggesting the Chinese were working on some kind of horrible biological weapon—I’d say mistrust in China’s motives is justified.  It’s also a very weird culture, as the wet markets proved.  The Chinese long believed rhinoceros horn to be an aphrodisiac; how far-fetched would it be to think they would believe something similar about the flesh of an albino giraffe?

For that matter, Africa is still a land filled with many folk beliefs and superstitions.  Albino humans in Tanzania, for example, are the targets of witch doctors, who harvest albinos’ body parts for use in their dark magic.  Gavin McInnes frequently mentions the belief among some African tribes that bald men’s heads are filled with gold.  And there is the horrific practice of AIDS sufferers raping virgins—especially very young children—in the belief that doing so will cure their affliction.

These are terrible things—far more wicked and evil than the murder of two albino giraffes.  But how we treat God’s Creation, even in its lower orders, is a reflection of how we treat one another.  Animal mutilation and murder is a key sign of a future serial killer or sociopath.

With that depressing preamble, here is 24 March 2020’s “Albino Giraffes Poached“:

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Restoring Order

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Friday night I hosted my Spring Jam, the second front porch concert I’ve staged (the first was the Spooktacular, which will be back again this October).  I’ll be writing a detailed review of Friday’s concert this weekend, and will catch up this week on some of the details of preparing for it (apologies, subscribers, for the delayed post).

The evening was a great deal of fun, with around forty attendees at any given moment (some folks stuck around for the whole thing, while others came and went).  We sold t-shirts, hot dogs, baked goods, and drinks, and took in tips and donations to pay our musicians.  I even managed to sell one of my pieces of artwork (!!!; the other one is still available).  One of my musician buddies and fellow bloggers, fridrix, showed up unexpectedly, and treated us to a surprise, three-song set, including his open mic song about open mics, “Fish Bowl.”

Of course, with all those people on the front lawn—and my niece and nephews running around with other kids inside the house—there was a good bit of cleaning up to do afterwards.  We knocked out the outdoor teardown fairly quickly, which meant throwing everything inside.  As such, my house was a wreck.

With my senior students graduating Saturday morning—and Memorial Day Weekend fun looming large—I had to put off the long task of restoring order to my home until Monday.

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