Beryl Markham got paid to fly her airplane over the Tanzanian grassland to find elephants for big game hunter rich men to shoot.
She tells the tale in "West With The Night" one of the best English language books ever written. It's been years since I last read it, but I think I remember her story about her job spotting elephants pretty well. She said after a few weeks of flying over groups of elephants, looking for big males with big tusks, she realized she was having trouble finding proper trophy elephants, not because she could find no elephants--elephants were plentiful in those days--she was having trouble because whenever she flew over, the elephants would circle up, with their heads pointed inward in the circle, so she could not see any tusks.
She thought about that for a while and decided to quit this job, which paid very well, and there weren't that many options for a female bush pilot in that part of Africa at the time.
But she could not shake the idea that if these animals were actually doing what she thought they were doing, hiding the big tusk elephants, protecting their fellow elephants, then these animals were smart enough she did not want to be an agent of their slaughter.
Consider what that story could mean, if true: It might mean the elephants connected the airplane which flew over them with the appearance, hours later, of men with guns driving up in Jeeps to shoot them.
Flipper with big ears.
Now President Trump has to decide whether to impose a rule forbidding importation of elephants as trophies, shot by big game hunters like his son in law and his sons.
Shooting big herbivores for sport? It's not like it's even a halfway even fight. Where is the sport in that?
Read "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (Hemingway) if you want some idea of what white big game hunter rich guys are like.
This is the essence of the pink puffer fish himself, an impotent white guy carried aloft by his paid staff after somebody else, someone with skill and courage, actually does shoot the lion for him.
She tells the tale in "West With The Night" one of the best English language books ever written. It's been years since I last read it, but I think I remember her story about her job spotting elephants pretty well. She said after a few weeks of flying over groups of elephants, looking for big males with big tusks, she realized she was having trouble finding proper trophy elephants, not because she could find no elephants--elephants were plentiful in those days--she was having trouble because whenever she flew over, the elephants would circle up, with their heads pointed inward in the circle, so she could not see any tusks.
She thought about that for a while and decided to quit this job, which paid very well, and there weren't that many options for a female bush pilot in that part of Africa at the time.
But she could not shake the idea that if these animals were actually doing what she thought they were doing, hiding the big tusk elephants, protecting their fellow elephants, then these animals were smart enough she did not want to be an agent of their slaughter.
Consider what that story could mean, if true: It might mean the elephants connected the airplane which flew over them with the appearance, hours later, of men with guns driving up in Jeeps to shoot them.
Flipper with big ears.
Now President Trump has to decide whether to impose a rule forbidding importation of elephants as trophies, shot by big game hunters like his son in law and his sons.
Shooting big herbivores for sport? It's not like it's even a halfway even fight. Where is the sport in that?
Read "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (Hemingway) if you want some idea of what white big game hunter rich guys are like.
This is the essence of the pink puffer fish himself, an impotent white guy carried aloft by his paid staff after somebody else, someone with skill and courage, actually does shoot the lion for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment