Yesterday, I saw a big Mercedes lorry go in.

I don’t know how they got that thing out but it was gone in the morning.

On the way home from school with the kids, I came across a bit of an obstacle in the road. Someone left a bit of machinery parked in my way and went home for the day. What isn’t obvious from the photo is that there were cars piled up behind me blaring and a u-turn is nearly impossible because of the open sewer.

I did manage to get around this behemoth by squeezing between it an the sign on the right.

At twilight, playful wresting often preceeds warp speet chase gams.

Tawzalt capers through the bamboo thicket at dusk.

I took this photo with my phone from my car near the new Vodafone head office in Accra, Ghana (one of the big buildings in the background). The dog has some Azawakh-like characteristics but with a major pot belly. Maybe he has a belly full of worms?

Tawzalt is scanning the garden, alert for intruders while I am having a wee dram of the Bowmore 12 on the porch. She is very distrustful of the staff in the neighboring apartment building who enjoy watching us over our garden wall during shift changes. In the background you can just make out our actual night guard in the little guard house.

Vandals

When not keeping an eye on the neighborhood, nighttime is a good time for group hole-digging. Zel gets the hole started while Tawzalt inspects his work.

They follow this up whith a high-speed chase game and wrestling match which my phone has no chance of photographing in the pitch black.

Hmm. Maybe that’s the pitch. This soap is so powerful, it can clean a camel, you should use it on your whole family.

Camel cleaning –> use on the whole family.

This camel soap is in no way related to the open source software.

I just came across this article at National Geographic. I must admit I have quite a fondness for African donkeys. They just keep keepin’on in the most difficult circumstances. Their bray is other-worldly. It sounds pretty much like the Tusken Raider that tries to kill Luke just before he meets Ben Kenobi in the original Star Wars.

Genetic analysis proves that the African wild ass, which may be down to the last few hundred individuals, is the ancestor of modern donkeys. The same study by an international group of researchers suggests that a subspecies, the Nubian wild ass, thought to have vanished, might have survived after all.

It turns out that the Wild Ass of East Africa is the living ancestor of all modern donkey lineages. These asses were domesticated by pastoral nomads around about 5,000 years ago. That’s potentially in the same ballpark as the domestication of the Azawakh dogs by those same nomads.

For that money you get a stripped house with no appliances or hot water heaters or air conditioners. You further may not have working plumbing or electricity. You need to also get a generator because the power is quite unreliable and finally you need a giant water tank because city water service goes out for weeks at a time. Furthermore, leases are very favorable to the landlord. Standard terms are that the tenant is responsible for making repairs to the property.

It is really quite amazing. Of course, this real estate boom may be related somewhat to the relatively recent discovery of oil offshore.

Anyway, we have found a place that we can make nice. It has one very, very awesome feature. It has is on a 1.5 acre plot within a 10 foot wall. There is a tropical garden and some very old trees that are perhaps 5 stories tall.

And there are frogs.

If you haven’t heard of Robert Sapolsky and have any interest in Evolutionay Biology, Human Origins, Animal Behavior, life in the African bush or the effect of stress on people and animals run out and get a copy of A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons.

Actually, you should read the book and then do the radio show because the interview with Robert Sapolsky gives away the wrenching ending to A Primate’s Memoir. Anyone who has read this book – you must listen to this show. There is an incredibly uplifting revelation about how things have worked out for Sapolsky’s baboon troupe.

The 3rd segment is about the Balyaev fox breeding experiments where Dr. Balyaev bred tame foxes in 10 generations and how that changed the animals.

Direct link to download the RadioLab MP3 podcast.