Hi, folks!
First Minus Tide of the cycle at 3:49 AM of -0.2 feet. The shop opens at 1pm. Fall hours are 1-6pm Thurs.-Mon. Featured photo by Anja.
[posting at 4:45pm] Rain Gauge – 0.6 in. Light rain and 61F. Wind at 0-8-?mph and gusting, AQI 156/97/172, UV5. Chance of rain 88% today and 76% tonight. GALE WARNING until 8pm. (heavy seas and gusty winds)
23 Fires in Oregon (7 contained or not active) – No smoke on that map, but that doesn’t make sense. 2 firespots
Large, Concerning or Complex Fires
Flat Fire – 34,242 acres – Same – about 1/2-way between Gold Beach and Grants Pass. – 75% contained.
Anvil Fire – Up – 21,537 acres – about 10 miles east of Port Orford – 16% containment
Tyee Complex – 7945 – Same – In the Umpqua Nat. Forest – 90%
Bedrock Fire – 31590 – Same – East of Eugene – 98% contained
Lookout Fire – 25,751 acres – Up – N of the Bedrock fire – 50% contained.
Camp Creek Fire – 2055 acres – Up – ENE of Sandy – 62% – Bull Run watershed
Smaller Fires
Morgan Fire – Down – 2289 Acres – NW of Lakeview, East of K Falls. 35%
Cougar Cr. #1 Fire – 6,288 acres – Same – W of Tyee Complex
Chilcoot Fire – 1946 acres – Same – East of Coos Bay in the Umpqua Nat. Forest – 65%
Lighthouse Rd #3 Fire – 1,003 acres – Same – Near Tyee Complex
Grizzly Fire – Up – 324 acres – Vicinity of the Salmon Fire
Brice Creek Fire – 571 acres – Same – Vicinity of the Salmon Fire – 95%
Big Tom Fire – 325 acres – Same – NE of Elkton
Petes Lake Fire – 3144 acres – Same – In the mountains near Mt. Bachelor – 50%
Pothole Fire – 109 acres – Same – about 12 miles s of McKenzie highway
3 Buttes Fire – Off the map – 119 acres – East of Carl Washburne Park (between Yachats & Florence)
Contained or nearing containment
Golden Fire – 2137 acres – Up a little – East of K Falls – 100%
Ben Harrison Fire – 95 Acres – John Day Wilderness – 100% – Has been off the map.
Ridge Fire – Same – 214 acres – Between Glide and Crescent Lake – 95%
Dinner Fire – Same – 304 acres – Vicinity of the Salmon Fire – 95%
Salmon Fire – 135 acres – Same – 95% contained – East of Oakridge
Horse Creek Fire – 763 acres – Up – South of 126 near the state airport – 100%
Boulder Fire – 233 acres – 100% contained. – South of Dufur – Has been off the map.
Marmont Road Fire – 20 Acres – South of Camp Creek – Has never been on the map! – 100%
Forecast – Rain of 1/2 an inch and winds in the 20’s today. 61/54 Tomorrow should be about the same with the rain getting a bit harder, and then the next 3 days will be showers. Highs around 60, lows around 50. Sat and Sun are likley to be dry, but cloudy. 61/48. ….and then more showers….
Lovage – 2022
Saturday evening got busy just as I was getting the newsletter out. I had people in shopping for books! After they left and I got the newsletter done I started working on the tides section, since we have a minus cycle starting today. Once that was done I burled up with my tablet for a bit then worked on emptying drawers. I’m going to have to move some of the stuff to the shop altar area, but I can’t get there right now. By 8pm I was toast, so I did what I could to close and curled up again.
Onion blossom
Tempus got back at about 20 past and I was already out cold on the sofa. We rolled home, skipped supper and I slept until past midnight. I set up the dehydrator, mostly with zucchini and tomatoes and then pulled the top tray of greens, just before we left for the shop.
Succulents 8/22
Tempus headed out at 1, so he got back a little sooner than usual for Sundays. I *still* didn’t have my oatmeal, so I just got a cup of coffee with the Sunday paper. IT was quiet and damp and the plants in the garden are *really* happy, although I may have to replant that lemon grass in that one bucket… it looks awfully dry. Maybe I didn’t have enough dirt over it.
There were a lot of ducks sheltering in the east end of the Eckman outflow, and not a single goose to be seen. I remarked to Tempus that the “mist” from the rain across the bay didn’t look right. Going by that AQI, it isn’t mist!
Lily – 2016
…and the shop got busy. I didn’t even get my first cup of coffee until nearly 3pm! We had people in shopping for incense and books and one man who had seen the website and started with asking about cookbooks and it went on from there. The migraine that I’ve been fighting for a couple of days kicked back in and I was fairly miserable.
Today is a regular Monday. I’m hoping Tempus is finally going to do laundry today and there are always more books.
A really different version of Bohemian Rhapsody. https://www.themusicman.uk/ralf-bienioschek/?fbclid=IwAR3peLnueocZuUKOIlJJ8Bn6l0KwJAw8gKTuBRz7zblwp_viZKoYN3sPeMw
Fairy Garden 5/19/13 by Anja. Someone took all the statues, so it doesn’t look this this, now.
Today’s feast is the Pyanopsia (Πυανόψια) or Pyanepsia (Πυανέψια) was an ancient Greek festival in honor of Apollo, held at Athens on the 7th of the month Pyanepsion (October). The name literally means “bean-boiling”. Various legumes were stewed and given to Apollo as a “ripener of fruits”. A suppliant branch”, was also offered, that sounds almost like our Christmas trees, but it was left up for a year and then replaced. More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyanopsia
Today’s Plant is Salal, Gaultheria shallon. This is a shrub, an understory plant, that ranges all up and down the west coast, from Alaska to California. They’re an invasive in wild heathlands in Europe, having been introduced back in the 1800’s. There’s a big industry in Oregon, supplying the foliage to florists. The local peoples harvested the berries as a primary food source, drying them into cakes. They make a nice crunchy snack, dried this way or individually. The young leaves are edible, too. One, nearly forgotten use, is medicinally as an astringent. Mashed with some water, they’re a great soother for sunburn or insect bites, even working on yellow-jacket stings. It also works internally on an inflamed digestive tract from ulcers to diarrhea and a tea (simple infusion) will help with a dry cough. Eat the young leaves as an appetite suppressant. – Feminine, Saturn, Juno – Use in spells as the medicinal uses, the appetite suppressant effect, particularly. This is an hardy herb, so it also can be added to spells for added duration. It also works in situations of emotional upset, particularly when there’s a sick stomach from stress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salal
Fall hours are 1-6pm Thurs.-Mon., although we’re often here later. Need something off hours? Give us a call at 541-563-7154 or Facebook message or email at anjasnihova@yahoo.com If we’re supposed to be closed, but it looks like we’re there, try the door. If it’s open, the shop’s open! In case of bad weather, check here at the blog for updates, on our Facebook as Ancient Light, or call the shop.Love & Light,
Anja
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Moon in Aquarius
Waxing Moon Magick – The waxing moon is for constructive magick, such as love, wealth, success, courage, friendship, luck or healthy, protection, divination. Any working that needs extra power, such as help finding a new job or healings for serious conditions, can be done now. Also, love, knowledge, legal undertakings, money and dreams. Phase ends on 9/29 at 2:58am. Waxing Gibbous Moon – From seven to fourteen days after the new moon. For spells that need concentrated work over a ¼ moon cycle this is the best time for constructive workings. Aim to do the last working on the day of the Full moon, before the turn. Keywords for the Gibbous phase are: analyze, prepare, trust. It is the time in a cycle to process the results of the actions taken during the First Quarter. During this phase you are gathering information. Give up making judgments; it will only lead to worry. Your knowledge is incomplete. Laugh. Analyze and filter. LOOK WITHIN. God/dess aspect: Maiden/Youth, but in the uncommitted phase, the Warriors – Associated God/desses: Dion, Dionysius, Venus, Thor. Phase ends at the Full on 9/27 at 2:58pm.
Walker imaged Jupiter on October 17th/2022 through excellent seeing. South is up. The dark dot is the shadow of Io, and Io itself is the little bright mark to the shadow’s left. Of course Io is round; look carefully. Its darker polar regions blend in here with the dark South Equatorial Belt behind it. (Contrast in this image is enhanced.)
By 10 or 11 p.m. bright Jupiter is high and shines precisely east. (The exact time of that depends on your location.)
Venus & the Pleiades 6/24/22
Look lower left of Jupiter, by about 1½ fists at arm’s length, for the Pleiades.
A similar distance below the Pleiades, Aldebaran has risen or soon will.
Capella
Nearly three fists left of the Pleiades shines Capella, second in brightness to Jupiter.
Regulus. the “little King” in the constellation of Leo
Venus moves into Leo today and sits 11.2° due west of Regulus, which anchors the Sickle asterism that outlines the Lion’s head, in the predawn sky. The bright, magnitude –4.7 planet now appears to hang directly below the Beehive Cluster (M44) in Cancer, as well as (higher up) the two bright stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini.
Located about 600 light-years away, the Beehive star cluster (M44) is one of the closest open clusters to Earth. theilr on Flickr
M44 is a stunning sight through binoculars or a low-powered scope; under good conditions, you may be able to make it out without optical aid whatsoever, though give it a try earlier in the morning rather than later. As twilight starts to brighten the sky, the young stars in this open cluster will fade from naked-eye view, though they’ll remain visible under magnification for longer.
11/13/20 – Planetary ducks in a row – Follow a line from the crescent Moon (upper right) toward the lower left-hand corner of this early morning photo, and you’ll spot first Venus, the Mercury. These three celestial bodies will share the sky, albeit in a different configuration, this Friday morning. – Ian Russell (Flickr)
Far to Venus’ lower left, also in Leo, sits magnitude –0.6 Mercury. An hour before sunrise, Venus is more than 25° high in the east, while Mercury is just 5° high, much closer to the horizon. Compare the two through a telescope: Venus is a whopping 35″ across, with only 32 percent of its face lit. Mercury is just 7″ across but shows off a 62-percent-lit face. The tiny planet sits nestled close to 5th-magnitude Chi (χ) Leonis, just 3′ northwest of this star early this morning.
Saturn (magnitude +0.6, in dim Aquarius) is the brightest “star” in the southeast in twilight. It’s three weeks past opposition. Saturn shines at a good height for telescopic observing by about 9 p.m., while Fomalhaut twinkles two fists at arm’s length below it. Saturn stands highest in the south around 11.
Runic half-month of Kenaz/Ken/Kebo – September 13-27 – Ken represents a flaming torch within the royal hall, so it’s the time of the creative fire – the forge where natural materials are transmuted by the force of the human will into a mystical third, an artifact that could not otherwise come into being. The positive aspects of sexuality that are immanent in Freya and Frey come into play at this time. Nigel Pennick, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, p. 102 Runic half-month of Gebo/ Gyfu – Sept 28-Oct 12 – Gyfu represents the unity that a gift brings between the donor & recipient. It is a time of unification, both between members of society and between the human and divine. Nigel Pennick, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, p. 102
Sun in Libra
Pluto (10/10), Saturn (11/4), Neptune (12/6), Chiron (12/26), Jupiter (12/30) Retrograde
Goddess Month of Mala runs from 9/6 – 10/2
Celtic Tree Month of Muin/Vine Sep 2 – 29
Color – Ivory
©2023 M. Bartlett, Some parts separately copyright
Grapes
Celtic Tree Month of Muin/Vine Sep 2 – 29 (Vitis vinifera L.) is a vine growing as long as 35 m (115 feet), in open woodlands and along the edges of forests, but most commonly seen today in cultivation, as the source of wine, grape juice, and the grape juice concentrate that is so widely used as a sweetener. European grapes are extensively cultivated in North America, especially in the southwest, and an industry and an agricultural discipline are devoted to their care and the production of wine. Grapes are in the Grape family (Vitaceae).
Muin – Vine Ogam letter correspondences
Month: August
Color: Variegated
Class: Chieftain
Letter: M
Meaning: Inner development occurring, but take time for relaxation
to study this month – Koad – Grove Ogam letter correspondences
Month: None
Color: Many Shades of Green
Class: None
Letter: CH, KH, EA
Meaning: Wisdom gained by seeing past illusions.
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Tides for Alsea Bay
*
Day High Tide Height Sunrise Moon Time % Moon
~ /Low Time Feet Sunset Visible
M 25 Low 3:49 AM -0.2 7:07 AM Set 1:54 AM 71
~ 25 High 10:36 AM 6.1 7:08 PM Rise 5:44 PM
~ 25 Low 3:55 PM 3.1
~ 25 High 9:40 PM 7.5
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Affirmation/Thought for the Day – Make this a loving day!
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Journal Prompt – What if? – What would you do if you ordered an ice cream cone and you forgot to bring money?
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Quotes
~ The Conspiracy in the streets needs: freedom, actors, peace, turf, money, sunshine, musicians, instruments, people, props, cars, air, water, costumes, sound equipment, love, guns, freaks, friends, anarchy, Huey free, a truck, airplanes, power, glory, old clothes, space, truth, Nero, paint, paint, help, rope, swimming hole, ice cream, dope, nookie, moonship, Om, lords, health, no hassles, land, pigs, time, patriots, spacesuits, a Buick, people’s justice, Eldridge, lumber, panthers, real things, good times. – Leaflet handed out by the Conspiracy office in the week before the trial
~ Every Religion is flawed. But that’s only because man-kind is flawed…Including this one. – Angels and Demons
~ Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees. – Faith Baldwin (1893-1978) US writer
~ Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: Could have, might have, and should have. – Louis E. Boone
The Naming of Cats, by T.S. Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name
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Magick – A CAMEL THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE, AND OTHER WILD TALES OF TRANSLATION – https://stantlitore.com/2018/06/01/a-camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle-and-other-wild-tales-of-translation/
Someone mentioned the squeezing of a rich man through the eye of a needle yesterday, and of course I started reflecting on mistranslation and the evocative power of language. The camel and the needle is one of my favorite examples of translation shenanigans, and is all the more delightful because no matter which way you translate or mistranslate it, the message of the metaphor remains roughly the same. For those not in the know, here’s what happened. Very probably, the rabbi Yeshua told his followers two thousand years ago that it is easier to thread a rope (like the big ropes used on fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee) through the eye of a sewing needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But, in Aramaic – the language he was speaking and the language in which the source text for the synoptic gospels was probably written – “camel” and “rope” are spelled the same: “gml.” They do -sound- different, but written Aramaic doesn’t often represent vowels. So someone dutifully recorded, “gml.” Now this gets even funnier when the synoptic gospels come along and people are translating the words of Christ into Koine Greek. Because in Koine Greek “camel” and “rope” are ALSO the same word, distinguished in text by a single vowel but pronounced almost identically. Camel is “kamelon” and rope is “kamilon.” In Latin and English, of course, “camel” and “rope” are really easy to tell apart. But, in both Aramaic and Greek, they are not. So while it is frustrating enough to try jamming a knotted fishing rope through the eye of a sewing needle, now we are left with the image of a massive dromedary squeezing through a needle, hump and all, and the rich are not only in a proper mess, but comically so. For want of a vowel!
It’s an amusing case because the meaning comes out somewhat similar in either case. And “camel” fits Jesus’s teaching style, which often made humorous use of hyperbole.
Other mistranslations are more sinister, like the popular translation of “arsenokoites” as “homosexuals,” which is a bit absurd, as there is a separate Greek word for that. “Arsenokoite” is a cognate of “man” and “bed” and no one knows what the word means because its usage is so rare. It’s been suggested that it was a reference to gigolos, but that’s an equally unsupported guess. Because the word occurs next to “malakos” (luxurious) it is more likely a colorful reference to the soft-living and pleasure-loving rich (who have a harder time in the New Testament than camels do). Malakos (soft) also gets mistranslated “effeminate,” mostly in order to support the reading of “arsenokoites” as “homosexuals.” But “malakos” doesn’t mean effeminate; there’s a different word for that, too. Malakos means luxury-loving, softened by easy life and too many soft cushions. In Greek, that concept doesn’t carry gendered connotations. Romans associated that with being “like a woman,” and because Romans had issues with effeminacy/masculinity*, we inherited both their commentary and their misreading. But the Greeks didn’t have these issues. (They had other issues.) There’s no evidence that “malakoi arsenokoites” had anything to do with sexual orientation, gender identity, or manliness or lack thereof. Greece is not Rome. Malakoi arsenokoites are most likely pleasure-loving rich men who loll about on bed eating grapes all day and ignore the suffering of their impoverished neighbors. That’s a type of vice that the New Testament lectures on frequently and at length, and to which the letters in which these words appear devote considerable attention. Rich, luxurious, gaudy living was also a vice that Greeks tended to scorn and treat with mockery. They would have found Trump Tower hilarious.
Other problematic cases include “ezer kenegdo” (which the West translated as “a helpmeet” or servant-companion, to describe the status of women toward men, but which in Hebrew simply means a helper partner and doesn’t imply hierarchy and is the same word used to describe God’s status toward humanity); or the mistranslation of “kephale” (head) to mean authority (authority is a different word), because of a Latin idiom we inherited that doesn’t exist in Greek (the Latin word for head also means leader, but in Greek “kephale” simply suggests origin, like the head of a spring or a river, and not authority) — someone asked for a link, so here you go, Marg Mowczko covers the research on “kephale” here.
— Or the mistranslation of “hupotassomai” as “submit,” as in, wives submit to your husbands, when “hupotassomai” doesn’t mean submit in Greek (there’s a different word for that). Hupotossomai is really hard to translate in English. It means “come under,” which may or may not imply what the Romans think it did. It is a military word for deployment in arranged, battle-ready formation, so the Romans jumped all over the possibility of hierarchy. Romans love hierarchy. But in context, in several places it is used in passages where Paul is talking either about the plight of Christian women with unChristian husbands and how to face the world together and speak your faith to a Greek or Roman husband who believes you’re property (this is the topic in the letters to Corinth), or following passages about putting on the armor of God and resisting the devil (in the letter to Ephesus). Remember that at the time, these letters were being written to challenge hierarchy, not support it, and to propose a radical egalitarianism in human relationships, and that most Christians in first-century Europe were women. The teaching that we are all one body in Christ was a harder pill to swallow for men in the Roman Empire than it was for women. The letters to Corinth speak of non-Christian husbands as vulnerable, still in bondage to old ways of thinking, half asleep and like soldiers blundering into enemy fire. In context, hupotossomai probably means to deploy yourself in support of your spouse against the enemy.
“Hupakoe,” which we keep translating obey, and which is used for children, never for spouses, in the New Testament, doesn’t mean “obey,” either. It means “hear under.” Children are being advised to listen and learn, not blindly obey. Again, context. These are letters urging people not to return to the ways of their parents, to abandon oppressive systems and live in a radically new way that is different from how their parents live. What’s being urged will create a world of strife within multigenerational Greek families. Hence the urging in that letter for parents not to provoke their children to anger and for children to listen deeply in the midst of the strife.
And so on.
The text is beautiful and often more nuanced than it appears in translation, and we consistently mangle it because we treat it like a Latin/Roman text instead of a collection of Hebrew and Greek texts. (When you translate radical or subversive texts into the language of Empire, you eventually get Imperial texts).
And also because we insist on reading it as if the people writing it were writing it today, with our connotations, figures of speech, and cultural fears, when in fact their cultural fears and figures of speech were completely different ones, and things that we get hung up on wouldn’t even have occurred to them.
And this leads me to reflect on the power of writing. As a writer, I’m a bit biased in thinking about how powerful written language is. But, when we look at a holy book that has been translated and mistranslated and construed and misconstrued over the course of 2000-2,500 years (or, if you want to look at something more recent, of less than 250 years of age, and within our own language without the added complexities of translation, consider the U.S. Constitution), it’s hard not to conclude that sometimes the treatment of a single word can shape entire cultures and political systems. That’s a humbling thought.
Stant Litore
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ADDENDUM: This post, which began as informal amusement about camels and ropes, has turned out to wildly popular, which I didn’t expect. So I have edited it to provide a little more context on a couple of the words (mostly hupotassomai and hupakoe), in hope that the post will be more useful. And if you would like to read more free posts on this and closely related topics, you can here:
- “What We’ve Forgotten.” There is a lot of evidence to suggest that first-century Christianity in Europe was largely a women’s movement. But how we’ve told and translated that history not only deletes much of what happened and why — it has significant impact today.
- “Aletheia, or What Is Truth?” In Latin, truth is a blunt object you can use to bludgeon people into submission. But in Greek, truth is an activity.
- “In a Time of Refugee Crisis, We’ve Forgotten Who We Are.” American Christianity is forgetting that in the New Testament, the most core fact of our identity is that we are those granted refuge (literally by a “Soter,” a Refuge-Giver) and that our first calling is to give refuge, both spiritually and physically, to other exiles.
- “Do You Need Religion to Be a Good Person (Or: Levinas for Everyone)?” Come cartwheel into the topic of ethics with me. This also will give you a peek behind the curtain at the thinking that underlies the lurching but exuberant experiment that is The Zombie Bible.
- “Why Christians Shouldn’t Ignore Derrida.” In the U.S., Derrida is treated largely as a bogeyman. But that means we’re missing out on a really exciting way to read. We’re missing out on how to read with humility and with all of a child’s curiosity and openness.
- “Stant Litore on the Bible: How and Why I Read It.” I wrote this because my readers asked. It was my first post on the subject. So here is a storyteller’s approach to an ancient library of sacred texts.
- And not free but affordable, here is a heartfelt study of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, called Lives of Unstoppable Hope. It’s also the story of my time with my infant daughter in the hospital, when I learned that hope, which I had thought small and delicate and frail as a moth in the night, might actually be sharp and strong as a blade.
P.S. On threads sharing this post, several people have brought up the old hypothesis that first-century Jerusalem had a “needle gate” that was very narrow, where a merchant had to unload their camel in order to get through. It’s an elegant and fitting idea, but it’s not historical. It’s a folk etymology proposed by fifteenth century clergy to explain the “camel through the eye of a needle” verse. (In other words, it was made up to explain the verse.) There’s no evidence of narrow gates (either a specific one or generally) being called needle gates or eyes of the needle in the ancient Middle East.
P.P.S. After this post went viral on Facebook, it led to some vigorous conversation, mostly around “arsenokos,” which appears to fire up the most controversy. I have copied some of my responses with further insight into “arsenokos” into the comments below this post, in case they should prove useful.
Stant Litore writes about tyrannosaurs, zombies, aliens, and ancient languages. He does not own a time machine or a starship, but would rather like to. His books include:
Nonfiction:
Lives of Unstoppable Hope
Write Worlds Your Readers Won’t Forget
Write Characters Your Readers Won’t Forget
Fiction:
The Zombie Bible
Ansible
The Running of the Tyrannosaurs
Dante’s Heart
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Silliness – Life as a Camel
A mother and baby camel are talking one day when the baby camel asks, “Mom, why have I got these huge three toed feet?”
The mother replies, “Well son, when we trek across the desert your toes will help you to stay on top of the soft sand.”
“OK,” said the son.
A few minutes later the son asks, “Mom, why have I got these great long eyelashes?”
“They are there to keep the sand out of your eyes on the trips through the desert.”
“Thanks Mom,” replies the son.
After a short while, the son returns and asks, “Mom, why have I got these great big humps on my back??”
The mother, now a little impatient with the son replies, “They are there to help us store water for our long treks across the desert, so we can go without drinking for long periods.”
“That’s great Mom, so we have huge feet to stop us sinking, and long eyelashes to keep the sand from our eyes and these humps to store water, but Mom…”
“Yes, son?”
“Why the heck are we in the San Diego zoo?”
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