Under Moonlight

At night I inhabit a clandestine world.  Under moonlight I sneak into the garden and allow my senses to take over.  Tactile sensations are what I crave.  My nostrils begin to flare as my eyes adjust to the tableau I see before me.  I open my arms wide, feel the coolest of breezes against my cheek, my neck, floating between the buttons of my shirt.  Were there ever such blissful kisses from lovers?  Perhaps.

 

Kneeling on the grass, I smell the musty odor of earth, rock, fungus, mold. Life.  My fingers dig into the soil, lifting rocks, pebbles, fallen leaves, flowers gone to seed, earthworms.  The breeze is getting stronger now.  Little gusts lift my hair into the wind, to fall down again against my cheek in an impish tickle.  While the world sleeps I am in my own dreamtime.

 

So into the garden, under moonlight is where I go when I need to remember that anything is possible, that life lingers on, that I, too am life.  Ten years ago I said goodbye to my brick prison of florescent lights, climate control and synthetic fibres.  Goodbye to the sad souls that trudged in each morning at eight and trudged out again at five.  And goodbye to the slow, steady, death of me. 

 

Under moonlight I am a mirror of north, south, east and west. I am a worthy player in this cycle of birth and rebirth, I am as majestic as the oak above my roof, the screeching owl in the night sky, the nightjar catching insects on the moonlit road. 

 

I am as endless as the spider that spins its web on my windchime, as beautiful as the star-filled heavens and as luminous as the moon.  I am as smooth and rounded as the river pebbles that crunch beneath my feet and as abundant as the tightly closed blossoms on the calistemon tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pollution in Black and White

In the warehouse the penguins seemed to stand in ranks.  Side by side or in groups they lurked in plastic porta pools like black and white soldiers after a battle lost.  Their braying filling the warehouse with a cacophony of sad sound. 

 

The noise made by the birds was incredible.  The warehouse was a hive of activity and organisation as birds were divided and housed according to their level of disability.  Here the feeding pool, there the scrub room, the tubing room, the drying room... 

 

Each room buzzed with voices and oilskin clad volunteers.  They wrestled with birds in various stages of ire at being force fed, washed and fed charcoal to absorb the oil.  I had never seen so many people united in a common cause before and I, personally, have not seen it since.

 

I had never held or worked with a penguin before and I hadn't any clues as to how I was going to deal with these birds.  "Are you here for feeding?" a woman's voice echoed in the vast interior of the building. "Yes" I said, deciding that I was.  "The fish are over here" she shouted and walked away. "Ok, I thought, "fish over here, bird over there, now what?"  I looked at the bird nearest to me. He looked pretty grumpy and I guessed he wasn't going to be easy. I spied a smaller bird who seemed like a better bet.  I jumped into the pool brandishing my sardine and approached him. 

 

"Yeah? right!" he seemed to say as he darted off to the other side of the pool. Where was he? They all looked the same now.  I tracked him down and headed toward him again trying to figure out how I was going to catch him, never mind feed him.  I looked at him, he looked at me and I grabbed at him.  Missed. Damn I thought these birds were under the weather.  Seem fine to me, send them back! (not really).  By now I was getting the idea.  The bird needed to be caught and held while being force fed.

 

I finally figured out a strategy.  Bird is hungry. Distract bird by waving fish in the vicinity of eye. Grab bird and hold on with all your might.  Shove fish in mouth without losing an eye or an arm. Do it again one hundred more times. When you are finished, do it again.

 

When you think of penguins you probably think of comical black and white creatures with a Charlie Chaplain like gait that don't seem to command much respect or endearment in the natural world.  In 1999, the Treasure oil tanker floundered off the coast of Cape Town spilling its cargo into the Mother city's cold and rich waters. 

 

The oil slick could be seen for kilometres.  Miserable, with heads hanging low and unable to swim, keep warm or eat, the African "jackass' penguin had just become the latest victim of progress.  To the men and women involved in this rescue effort it was really a race against time.

 

The bedraggled penguins were rescued by the thousand.  The whirr of helicopters and hum of boats both big and small, private, government and commercial heralded what was to become Cape Town's biggest ever bird rescue effort.  The South African Foundation for Conservation of Coastal Birds or SANCCOB as most South Africans refer to it, was instrumental in the successful management of this gargantuan task.

 

Hundreds of dedicated men and women  hurtled back and forth from the shores of Cape Town to Dassen Island, Robben Island, Dyer Island and all along the coast to find the birds, box them and ferry them to the warehouse that would be their home for several months.

 

Each year about 600 million tonnes of oil finds its way around the tip of Africa.  Freshly spilled crude oil is nothing less than poison.  Small, volatile molecules of oil make their way from the sea to the air.  As this happens a thick, mousse-like residue is left behind the effects of which are potentially disastrous.  While oil can be cleared up using non-toxic chemical dispersants it often comes too late for birds, in particular. 

 

The oil destroys the insulating ability of their feathers.  Penguins spend most of their day fishing in the cold Atlantic offshore waters around the Cape.  Without insulation the water causes them to become wet and cold, eventually dying from exposure.  Often the birds will take in quantities of oil where it affects their digestive systems and ability to eat.  There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing these birds in such a pathetic and unnatural state.

 

Thankfully the typical Capetonian grit was in evidence and conservation organisations worked with SANCCOB to rescue as many birds as possible.  No matter how small the resources, everybody seemed to want to get involved and chances were that if you weren't on a boat or helicopter you were following a radio report about oiled birds in your car or truck.

 

Between 1968 and 1981 there were no less than twenty four oil tanker accidents off the coast of southern Africa.  These spills have poured more than 250 000 tonnes of oil into our seas and it continues with disasters such as the Treasure oil spill.  Various laws, fines and penalties have been introduced to force commercial shipping companies to clean up their mess but it's still happening far to frequently.  When did our seas become a gigantic waste paper bin?

 

As for me,  I graduated to official penguin washer and became a dab hand at handling these incredibly strong birds.  I dreamed in black and white for months afterwards. I did not ever think I would say that I had cleaned a penguin with a toothbrush, and I must seem really weird at dinner parties.

 

And what of the penguins? They were cleaned, allowed to fatten up and, months later, released back into the majestic oceans.  Each bird was marked with pink non-toxic dye so that it's progress could be tracked.  Months later while working on my island I saw a pink marked bird barreling down the beach. Despite knowing what I do about the real world and its dangers, there was nothing else to do but smile.

 

But this is the crux of the matter, isn't it? No matter what we do the disasters seem so much bigger than our toothbrushes and fish.  However, if you were to ask that penguin he would probably think it was worth the fight.

Sea Change

"Be careful" my father yells.

 

"Look out for bluebottles, they'll sting you!"

 

My sister and I race onto the sand, oblivious to my father's rough tones.  For a moment I can't keep up.  I take a deep breath and surge forward. The knobbly knees that are the trademark of our family are tanned but strong; our toes cake forks in the wet, gritty sand.  The dunes seem to disappear behind us as my father's voice drifts away, his mouth forming a silent "O" on the wind.

 

This is “our beach” on a perfect summers evening.  Big sis and I are two waifs in shorts and striped T-shirts. Tracy is five years older, her dark hair long and shiny in the last rays of the sun.  Her legs are muscled from her swimming lessons at school. I am seven and her polar opposite. 

 

Blonde and petite, with a little pot-belly, I have just cut my hair short during a rebellious frame of mind.  My angst culminated in the determination to transform my buttock length tresses.  Now it's a Little Lord Fauntleroy, page boy crop. I like it, and then I hate it and cry.

 

We clamber up and onto the rocks that seem so big and sharp under our bare feet.  The tide has long since receded, leaving behind its secret world.  The shallow pools of water nestled between the rocks are teeming with tiny fish, rainbows of sea anemones, spiky urchins, scuttling crabs.  Octopus, starfish, sea cucumbers, alikreukels and sea lettuce play out their lives for us to watch, and poke and prod. 

 

I stick my forefinger into a plum anemone. It closes over my finger and I am filled with giggles that seem to well up from deep in my stomach. I try to find a sea-hare, the little snail that eats sea lettuce. I think this is the greatest fact I have ever learned. 

 

It tickles my imagination and makes me want to tell everybody the secrets that I know.   The roar of the ocean beyond fills my ears, my mother and father tiny figurines in the distance.   I know my father is keeping a watch on the tide.  I know, too, that he is worrying.

 

Tracy and I walk along the sand, lifting seashells to our ears to hear the expected roar and rush that sounds so much like their ocean home.  We find a stranded raft of bluebottles. “Ugh” we recite in unison and leave it alone, wandering on and on along the shore, teasing the waves with our toes, racing in and out of the surf before it catches our ankles. 

 

The fading years seem to catch up with me now.  The memories seem like yesterday and I am once again a little girl, wide-eyed with wonder, marvelling at new worlds.  The rock pools are smaller now, my feet bigger, my eyes need help in seeing clearly into the distance.  But  I am still prancing, wide-eyed, entranced by the natural world. Every beetle, spider, bit of pollen, memory of life, seems to hold me under its spell.

 

Today I was kneeling on the concrete watching ants work.  My knees are still knobbly.  Two things, at least, have not changed.