Walking with elepnants

First things first, though. In today’s news we learned that an ostrich’s eye weighs 60 grams; its brain weighs 40 grams. Some days, I can sympathize.
After a lovely breakfast at a coffeeshop — which had a beautiful green wall, Sandy, and we’ll send you pictures — we decided to go to Birdland/Monkeyland, which is north of Plett. Well, we turned onto that road and saw a sign for walking with elephants, so, of course, we turned in that direction. What a terrific time we had! By the time the tour started, there were three couples, counting us, and there were three elephants: Marula, the matriarch (though she was not the oldest), Jabu and Thandi. Marula and Jabu both had defective trunks (they had lost the “fingers” on the end of their trunks in the wild), which meant that we gave them treats on the inside of the outside of their trunks and they then put them in their mouths; Thandi’s trunk was OK, so we put her treats in her trunk, which she then blew into her mouth. But Thandi has no tusks, so the others help her out when tusking is necessary. Elephants are very good about helping each other out as needed. We got to walk hand in trunk into the forest and got to pet them and learn about them up close and personal. What a swell time it was! They made a video of everyone and the elephants — the videographer, a man, spent most of his time taking video of a beautiful young blonde woman. Of course! Alas, I don’t understand how I lost 35 pounds and STILL look as fat as I did before. What the hell is that shit????
For lunch we stopped at Moss and Maple farmstall, where we met a lovely young man who was our waiter. His name is Janoh and he will be a high school senior next year. I had a great drink made of passion fruit juice combined with lemonade. Yummy.
Nice drive back and much quicker than going, and we found where there is a grocery store for future reference. Like Marita, we’ve decided to try having our dinner at lunchtime, very Georgia-farm-folk for me, and eating less at night — gotta do something or I’ll have to lose that damn 35 pounds again when we get home! Last night we just had plates of sauteed veggies, though I did sort of ruin the hoped-for effect by having about three glasses of wine. Small glasses, but even so, not helpful for dieting purposes. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make wine fattening?!?

Even so, I think I’ll go have a glass — I’d rather skip the damn veggies.

Elephantly yours, jm.