Comet Moths

            On Friday I finished posting my translation of “Si ca peut te consoler" (If it’s any Consolation) by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first seven lines of “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) from Gainsbourg’s 1976 album of the same name.

            I washed the outside of my apartment door frame.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish has gotten a job as a nightclub spotter. He gets paid $30 a week to eat and spend money in nightclubs. The owner of a chain of nightclubs has hired Kingfish to be a secret customer so as to check up on the food and service. Apparently this is a job that still exists. Kingfish does not want to tell Sapphire that he has a job and so when he comes home late he makes up stories such as having played cards all night. But when the manager of a club called The Blue Slipper comes to the door to return Kingfish’s wallet, Sapphire immediately calls her mother. Her mother advises her to make Kingfish jealous and so she invites Andy over for dinner. He accepts because Sapphire tells him Kingfish will be there later. After the meal she tries to flirt with Andy but he falls asleep in the chair. That night when Kingfish comes home from work he sees that a man has been there. The next day when Andy comes into Kingfish’s office he sees him sitting with a baseball bat and a pair of brass knuckles. Kingfish explains that someone has been seeing his wife and so Andy promises that when he finds the guy he'll help to beat him up. Then Kingfish receives an anonymous call from someone telling him that the man that was with Sapphire the night before was Andy. Kingfish moves towards Andy with the bat. Andy tries to explain but Kingfish is not listening. Suddenly Amos, the only sensible and intelligent character on this show, arrives. He immediately diffuses the situation and convinces Kingfish that Andy wouldn’t have made a play for Sapphire. Kingfish hits Andy with the baseball bat anyway for having eaten three slices of his roast beef. Later Kingfish chastizes Sapphire and her mother for the way they reacted and tells them to only believe what they see with their own eyes. The next day the two women are on the street and they see a taxi go by. In the back with his arm around a fashionable dressed female form is Kingfish. Sapphire has seen it with her own eyes and decides to leave Kingfish. Seconds later we learn that the female form that Kingfish is escorting is a department store mannequin, as he has a new job delivering them and he had to hold the dummy tightly so it wouldn’t fall apart during the cab ride.

            I went for a bike ride to Bloor and Yonge, south to Queen and then home. This closing of non-essential businesses has certainly made it a lot easier to cycle on a Friday at rush hour. Usually there is an obstacle course of double parking cars to deal with as drivers stop to quickly grab one thing or another from a store. Nowadays it’s smooth sailing.

            I made a barbecue sauce from ketchup, Chinese chilli paste, olive oil, cider vinegar, cumin, seasoned salt, garlic, pepper, corn syrup and ginger. I smeared it all over some pork side ribs and grilled them in the oven. I also made gravy out of some roast beef drippings, flour and garlic butter. I had a potato with some ribs and gravy while watching two episodes of David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest: Quest to Madagascar, from the 1950s.

            Although Madagascar is 400 kilometres off the east coast of Africa the people of the central part of the island have their origins in Indonesia. They have lighter complexions than native Africans, straight hair, speak a version of Malay and their music and instruments are those of Malaya, Siam and Myanmar. Certain instruments are only allowed to be played by the noble class or Hova among this group of Malagasy. Also unlike most Africans they live in two story brick houses and instead of corn they grow rice. In the spring these people have a festival of renewal in which the graves of the dead are opened because the culture is one of ancestor worship. It’s the ancestors that allow a woman to be able to bear children and so once a year the dead are brought out of their graves to be entertained with music and dancing. They must also hear loud, friendly conversations. The silk wrappings for the dead must be changed to new ones. Everyone must wear their best clothing and prepare the best food and the best musicians must be hired to play for the event. Some families spend all of their money to participate. Some of the bodies are little more than dust but they are considered magical and so women are allowed to take pieces of the old wrappings as fertility charms. The festival lasts three days and before they are put back in their tombs the bodies are taken on a tour of the rice fields so they will know that everything is still being well cared for.

            From Merina, David travelled southwest to visit the fisher people called the Mahafaly. These people are closer to native Africans in origin. If stranger stands on the shore and asks for a fish it must be given to him and never sold, but in village the fish must be paid for.

            A thousand kilometres away at Lake Anivorano there is a legend that the lake used to be the site of a village. But the people, except for one woman, refused to give a witchdoctor a drink. He warned her to leave and to take her children with her and then he caused the village to be flooded. The people on the shores of the lake believe they are the descendants of that woman and that the former inhabitants of the village live on as crocodiles. Women that want to bear children will come to the lake and chant. When the crocodiles hear the singing they come towards the shore. The men sacrifice a cow and throw pieces of meat to the crocodiles. When the crocodiles eat the food the people know that their prayers will be answered.

            Since many animals of Madagascar are believed to be the embodiment of the souls of ancestors, David had to go to places outside of tribal boundaries in order to find the animals that he wanted to catch. It was in such a place that he found and caught the boa constrictor that he was looking for. Most constricting snakes in Africa are pythons and boa constrictors are more commonly found in South America. The type that David found lives only in Madagascar. 

            In part 4 of the series David went to one of the only large patches of natural forest left in Madagascar. In David’s hut he observed the behaviour of ant lions that live beneath the sand and when they sense an ant or other insect crawling above them they begin to toss up sand for the purpose of causing a small landslide that will cause the ant to tumble into the pit to be eaten. The ant lion is really just the larva of what will develop into something like a dragonfly.

Also in his hut there were mud wasps building cells on the wall out of mud from the nearby lakeside. She uses her spit and shapes the cell with her antennae. When there is only a small opening she will catch a spider, sting and paralyze it and place it in the cell. Then she will lay an egg on top of the spider and close up the hole. When the egg hatches the baby wasp will have live food to eat until it is fully grown and then it will break out of the cell. The female wasp makes at least one cell every day and it takes her about three hours.

The most beautiful and famous of Madagascar’s insects are its moths, which are as gorgeous as any butterflies. The comet moth is almost wormlike as it emerges from its cocoon but in just half an hour it will grow magnificent and colourful wings.

The main thing David was looking for in that area were lemurs. It was illegal to catch brown lemurs but David found a trap in the forest built by poachers and destroyed it. Lemurs have hands and feet like monkeys but their tales cannot be used for gripping. The name “Lemur” comes from a Latin word meaning “ghosts”. The most magnificent of the lemurs is the roughed lemur. They are over a metre long and most are different combinations of black and white like a panda. Some however, instead of white patches have ones of reddish gold. Lemurs are primates but are much older from an evolutionary standpoint than monkeys and apes. In prehistoric times there were lemurs the size of horses. Back in the studio David showed two ring tailed lemurs that seemed to be his personal pets. They are also called cat lemurs and they have a passion for licking themselves, each other and anyone that cares for them. Also like cats they purr and meow but they are vegetarians.