Little Poss stuck his head in through the back door last night. Luckily the door wasn’t open wide enough for him to get his shoulders through, so he was momentarily halted. Not quite knowing what to do I gave him a very gentle tap on the nose. He looked at me as though I had said I was selling him to the workhouse. But he backed out and I shut the door, preventing an evening of chasing a mid-sized marsupial around the house, followed by a night of mopping up possum pee.
I don’t know why he was so offended by such a soft tap. Perhaps he doesn’t know that I have seen him trying to wrench open the mouth of another possum to extract whatever it was eating.
Exhibit A, m’lud.
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And on the subject of possums, I spotted a green ringtail this afternoon. It was curled up on a liana at the edge of the rainforest, about 15 m from the house. I ran off one fuzzy shot through window and vegetation (below) and then went out to find a spot with a clearer view.
Green ringtails must have keen eyesight and/or know that houses can be a source of annoyance, because in the few seconds it took me to get into the garden, the animal had decamped to the other side of a tree. It was still in place an hour later. (I could see one paw clinging to the trunk.) I hope it had fallen asleep in that position and hadn’t remained there because it was too terrified to move. If it compares notes with Little Poss, I’ll be in trouble.
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After mentioning ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ yesterday, I fell into the labyrinth of Wikipedia links. [Ed:— Can you fall into a labyrinth?] [According to Wikipedia, Socrates said you could] [Ed :— According to Wikipedia, a labyrinth is not a maze, but a single path.] [What’s your point?] [Ed:—I don’t know. You started it with your stupid metaphors.] Although Wikipedia is nowhere near as dangerous as TV Tropes (Do not follow that link) —. [Ed:— How can a website that you can leave with one click of the button be considered dangerous?] [Oh, no, not again.] [Ed:— Also, minotaurs.]
Anyway, Wikipedia introduced me to ’Edith Clampton (Mrs)’, former letter writer to the Bangkok Post. From there, I found this blog post by Stephen Cleary at Thai Blogs, which reproduces some of her finest efforts. You can read Edith’s work at the previous link and in this follow up post. Here is one of her letters.
Pizza Men on Bikes Prove Too Elusive
SIR: I’m afraid Pizza (Steve’s notes: Pizza Hut) and Dominos need a dressing down. From time to time their sales people ride motorcycles up and down my soi. And I have great difficulty trying to get them to stop. Other vendors like the lady who rides a bicycle and sells yogurt – she always stops. The ice-cream man, the fruit man and the rag and bone man, the pork-on-the-stick man and the somtam man – they never fail to stop. But the pizza men – I have to stand in the middle of the road and wave my arms about like an idiot before they even acknowledge me. And then they speed off when I try to open their box and buy a pizza. It’s high time somebody stepped in and taught these young hooligans a thing or two about salesman-ship – you don’t make money by swerving around your customers.
Edith Clampton (Mrs)
Looks as though I’ve found a new hobby.
