We rise late, but are still the first to have breakfast – soon to be joined by a taciturn guy who looks like an incognito rock star, with his lady manager. Which is what he proves to be. He was one of the stars of the Meerkat Festival concerts, a South African singer named Danie something. Our host Berlia is completely excited to get an autographed CD… The rest of morning means less splendour: We are told to go and see another Motor Electrics company to try and have our car fixed. The guys turn out to be less than interested, even though Robbie from Asco can clearly tell them where the problem must be. So it is decided that we get a replacement car delivered to the Kalahari Meerkat Project.
I’ve been at the Kalahari Meerkat Project two years ago in 2005, on an Earthwatch expedition, when no one really cared about the future stars of Meerkat Manor (read diary here). After my stay I became the webmaster of the project, kalahari-meerkats.com, making our stay at this project otherwise closed to the public possible.
At 11 am we meet Prof. Marta Manser, one of the project leaders, and Christophe Bousquet her PhD stundent. I have the long-awaited pancakes with banana and caramel topping at Café Molinari in Uptington. We leave only after noon, for the 210 km trip to the Kalahari Meerkat project. The drive is quite boring, apart from the potholes and the odd buck or dassie. When we finally arrive at Kuruman River Reserve (KRR), the place is more or less deserted - the volunteers have just left for their afternoon visits to the meerkats. Only Dave, the assistant project manager, is here. He is about to visit Frisky who live quite close to the farm, and we get our stuff ready to join him for the evening weights.
The Frisky meerkats
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Frisky live close to the Rus en Vrede farmhouse, on the Heights farm just opposite the farm entrance. They were once one of the biggest groups, with close to 50 animals. They are down to currently 10 animals, led by the long-term dominant couple Bootle (female) and Gazebo (male, radiocollar). Frisky are one of the few groups now who have a non-related male, with Gazebo coming from Drie Doring who live just South of Frisky.
Dave only has to take the meerkats’ evening weight, so we set out only around 5 pm. The light is soft, but the landscape is so overgrazed that it seems hard to the eye. We spot the group from the car, already close to their recent sleeping burrow.
It is overwhelming to be back with the scurries again, even if the group is small and the area bleak. They are foraging peacefully, with Clinton Baptiste trying to get a hole through to Alaska, while Gazebo scans the horizon like an elderly statesman, but eventually they all settle down near their burrow for some grooming, but also some getting used to the idea of sleeping. They do this with their heads tucked under, forming a ball. I did not remember this position from my previous trip. Anyway, we just sit there and watch and take pictures and enjoy being with the meerkats (again). It’s a pity somehow because Dave knows a great deal about meerkats. I should bombard him with questions.
Back to the farmhouse we are given our room, in the PhD block, i.e. we stay in the researchers’ farmhouse, not the Earthwatchers’ farmhouse that is a few km away. We have dinner with the researchers, in the armchairs in the common room – it is still too cold to dine outside. The dinner is also where I finally meet Prof. Tim Clutton-Brock – we agree to spend some time on the website the next day. We’re all interrupted by David, a volunteer coming home late from his visit to Commandos, performing a dance - Commandos had a huge IGI (intergroup interaction) with Whiskers, with a lot of males being at loss which side they’re on, while others seemed fully aware that they were picking the neighbour’s fruit. Such action has been rare in the recent months, with no females pregnant and the groups intent on finding the scarce food that the drought produced.
Sunday is always a more relaxed day for the researchers: Apart from their individual weekly day off, they take Sundays easy and only go out to take the meerkats’ rollcalls, morning and evening weights, without further ad lib observations. Furthermore, with Earthwatchers as well as the Meerkat Manor film crew being around, the choice of groups available for a visit needs to be considered. We agree to join Helen, a volunteer who has been here for six months. She’s to go out with Moomins. They are well known to sleep in (and go down the burrow while the sun is still up), so we leave later than 7 am.
Moomins were one of my favourite groups during my 2005 visit, because they were so relaxed and playful – and they lived in beautiful surroundings. Since then, the Moomins have moved Southeast, so that they now have Big Dune in their territory – which was in the Whiskers’ grip during my last stay. Whiskers have moved to take over part of Young Ones’ land, while Young Ones are where Elveera used to be – and so on. The researchers promised to provide an updated territory map for the KMP website, so it will be interesting to see how territories shifted, in response to group sizes, the drought, and the loss of whole groups to TB.
Another change in Moomins is the loss of Burgan, the former dominant male, and of Grandpa Grumble the oldest subordinate male, by End of June. Burgan’s remains had been found, predated by whatever animal, which was interrupted in its meal after only taking part of the upper body and forelegs. A strange sight, the ones who found him told me. Grandpa Grumble, who I vividly remember since he used to do sentry duty on my shoulder, just disappeared that same day and was not found – sharing the fate of about 70% of the project’s meerkats. This means that dominant female Grumpy, Little My and Grumpy’s daughters are now without a non-related male, and open to the advances of roving males – if their natal males allow this. Toft, the oldest son of Grumpy “plays dominant male”, which includes most dominance behaviours except for the mating with his mother or sisters. However, natal dominant males also go roving while none of their female relatives is in oestrus. The bad thing is only that the Moomins’ territory has been so removed from the others’ that encounters with rovers were extremely rare. The Moomin’s move Southwards might prove very useful in this field. A pity that Zaphod’s rover gang was recently seen at Sox’s dam in the Northwest, rather than near Big Dune.
We reach the sleeping burrow after a short walk, but then wait for 30 minutes, until Grumpy and Frida appear. Third is famous Fluffernutter, the meerkat born without claws and no fangs. The fangs grew later, but the claws are still clearly missing, only replaced by calloused toes – and claws are just the most important tool meerkats need to survive. Born in December 2005, Fluffernutter just survived his second Kalahari winter – a remarkable feat only made possible for a mix of reasons: His own strong instinct to survive, his kind family responding to his begging even when he was no longer a pup (he wouldn’t have survived in a more aggressive group), his extreme competitiveness in food fights (Fluffernutter is the all-time No. 1 food competitor of the project), but also the contempt of Earthwatchers and even the odd volunteer who feed him egg even if they shouldn’t. Rumours go that he was once fed an entire egg, by an Earthwatcher. He must have choked. Anyway, looking at a Moomins family portrait, Fluffernutter can still be discovered with ease due to his low weight: He looks like a juvenile, a bit too thin for his fur, weighing around 470 g instead of the ca. 570 g of his two siblings, or the almost 700 g of Grumpy. Chances are good that he will catch up once the rains bring plenty of food.
Fluffernutter’s sister and brother stand out since they also wear radiocollars – because they were fitted with heart rate transmitters (see Rascals). Within the next 20 minutes, the whole group appears above ground and starts to sun – all of them issueing soft sunning calls. Compared to my last visit, they are much less playful – maybe because there are no juveniles around, but also because they don’t want to spoil their energy on playfighting when food is scarce.
Helen starts weighing once everyone is accounted for – I couldn’t tell if Grumpy or Fluffernutter, both well-known “egg monsters”, wins the race to be the first on the scales. Weighing takes approx. 20 minutes, after which Helen returns to the farmhouse. JJ and myself are okayed to remain with the Moomins while they forage, and later walk back to the farmhouse – my assertions that I’ll find the way back past Big Dune, across the riverbed and along Old Vanzyls’Road are convincing (and prove right, after all). Equipped with a radio, we set out.
Led by Grumpy, the Moomins make a beeline for the foraging grounds (they’re famous for doing this beeline) and fan out in the plains. After a few minutes, the 19 meerkats are gone – or so it seems, all of them busy digging hidden in low bushes. I observe Fluffernutter’s strategy for a while: he often digs in places where other family members dug without success. With the hard-baked top sand removed, he digs deeper in the loose sand and sometimes finds a treat. After just 15 minutes of foraging, he finds a big millipede – and defends it hard enough that he gets to eat it all by himself. Either he’s ferocious, or his relatives are kind – but it works.
The Moomins forage in a large bow around the Big Dune, and while I crouch down to take pictures of flying sand, Malpa Hamadryas a subordinate male comes to stand on my leg for a little guarding. JJ is at the same time approached by another meerkat, but it unfortunately doesn’t see the need to guard – JJ’s niece and nephew would have loved to see a meerkat sit on top of uncle JJ’s new cowboy hat!
Something remarkable happens when the Moomins come across the far end of Big Dune and step on the plains on the other side: they all go on guard – not because of a predator, but rather because of someone else unwanted. Could it be that another meerkat is in the neighbourhood? Or even the Hoax, the small new group with wild animals that has been seen South of Big Dune? Hoax are not yet fully habituated: They allow weighing and dyeing except for the dominant female Mau Mau (who had been taken for a male first because she was too elusive to be sexed); and it is also Mau Mau who still tries to lead the otherwise habituated group away from the researcher when they forage. However, Marta who is the most experienced habituator in the project right now, said it won’t take much longer… In any case no trace of Hoax or another meerkat is seen by the Moomins or us, and they resume foraging.
We decide to leave Moomins to themselves around 10 am, and start the walk back to the farm. Underway we see two white-backed vultures, a hare startled to leave her hiding place a few steps from us, a lone wildebeest observing our hike, and various birds. The leisurely walk takes longer than expected, but this is just fine in this region.
Afternoon & Gamedrive
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We join Marta and Tim for lunch, and start discussing the KMP Friends project until later in the afternoon. While I discussed most things with Marta before, it is very interesting to hear Tim’s angle – he seems sometimes almost surprised by the amount of interest in meerkat biology and research (not just in cute meerkat characters) generated by Meerkat Manor, but he has for sure a many useful ideas which will be realised on the website over time. The rest of the afternoon is spent with organising photos, taking pictures of the farm for the website, reading, and watching the volunteers and some Earthwatchers play volleyball.
At 16:30 the driver with our replacement car arrives, and after taking the new one over we join Marta for a drive through the reserve. First we drop by the Gannavlakte farm to deliver some stuff, and I finally meet Helene, the Earthwatch coordinator and a few of the Eartwatchers – only briefly, unfortunately. On our way back along the riverbed, JJ suddenly yells stop – because there’s a cat near us. So after years and years of coming to Africa, we see our first African Wild Cat, a redhaired guy. We obviously met him just after he had hunted down some prey, because he is absolutely unwilling to run away. He remains sitting in the riverbed for minutes, almost aglow with the soft light of the setting sun, so that even the Earthwatchers who follow behind us can see him. A wonderful experience! We are less lucky in finding the aardvark that had been observed in the riverbed for weeks – he obviously left for a new burrow. Later on, while driving to the Pharside dam in the Western part of the reserve, we also see another Kalahari inhabitant from close: a bat-eared fox. A successful gamedrive, so that we almost forget our Gin & Tonics, and thus have sundowner after the sun is down.
We leave at 7 am for Elveera, together with David. He’s Dutch and started at the project as assistant working mainly with yellow mongooses, ensuring their habituation for future projects. After the decision to stop yellow mongoose habituation until there is again demand for it, David now works as a meerkat volunteer. His thoughts are still with the yellows though – maybe he’ll be the one to rekindle the demand for habituated yellows…
Elveera moved South since my last stay at the KRR, they’re now on the “B side” on the Heights farm – North of Drie Doring, West of Frisky, South of Lazuli. Their current sleeping burrow is the worst imaginable: Next to piles of rubbish left by the farm’s workers, and close to two jackal carcasses – probably victims to poison or a gun. The farmers around KRR don’t like what they consider cattle predators. Apparently they only recently noticed that the meerkat researchers are the ones researching the Meerkat Manor meerkats – the series is now also on satellite TV in the KRR region. This maybe softened the attitude of the more resilient farmers to the project’s work – but it doesn’t yet help the jackals or other conservation issues like overgrazing…
We have been warned that Elveera’s dominant male Habusu usually goes berserk at the weights box – marking anything within reach and occasionally even trying to bite, and making it quite hard to weigh anyone else than him. We expect to be in for some action – until David notices that he has taken the wrong backpack, the one of the Drie Doring group. Not only does he miss his own Psion handheld and spare batteries, but he’s also got the Drie Doring scales. It is decided that he’ll try with what he has (both groups are free of TB, there’s no danger to spread the disease with this backpack mixup) – so we expect Habusu will go completely and utterly berserk about scales with another group’s perfume.
The first Elveera meerkat to get up is Teabag, a younger brother of Habusu, soon followed by the rest of the group. They sun for a long time – giving me time to take a lot of pictures. There is not much grooming, except for Jo Jo Hello (the dominant female wearing the radiocollar) and Habusu who groom each other extensively. JJ in the meantime serves as a windshield for Chocolatine, a subordinate female who basks in the sun leaning against him. When weighing starts we are all surprised to see that Habusu is rather scared than angry about having the wrong scales – the group sniffs the scales, and David doesn’t succeed in weighing Habusu. The first time this happens… Habusu runs to hide behind Jo Jo Hello instead.
The group leaves the sleeping burrow around 08:25. I get the GPS to enter the marks of the group’s foraging directions (this is what the Earthwatchers usually do) – luckily I seem to master it again after a few tries. The group moves towards the workers’ homes where the rubbish piles are even bigger. They forage between rusty metal, plastic bags and dead goats or porcupines. It must be rich foraging grounds and the meerkats seem to carefully avoid the rubbish itsself, but it’s really ugly to look at, so JJ decides to return to the farm after one hour. There are not many sentinels in the first hour of foraging. The group keeps foraging, the only notable thing is that there are many food competitions between the two dominants, which is unusual. Jo Jo Hello also seems to be a little bit unwell – once she goes into the “ball position” usually only seen before sunset, and a bit later she vomits a piece of food. Are these the signs of an early pregnacy? A while later the group starts to make “move sounds” and finally leave the worst area. We climb two fences, over to the sheep “meadow” (so overgrazed that there are just bushes, no single blade of grass left).
The meerkats go on foraging, interrupted by several predator alarms, one of which is to a martial eagle flying high. David just mentions that session with Rascals where a martial eagle obviously somewhat habituated to humans flew past him only 3-4 meters high. Luckily the Elveera martial eagle is not of that kind…
After the three hours of foraging David starts with the lunch weights. Now Habusu is back to his normal self and is the first in the box, followed by extensive anal-marking. A pity only that the spare batteries are in the other backpack, so David cannot do any lunch weights.
We walk back to the farm and meet Dave who’s cycling back from his stay at Zappa. They have had three wild males immigrating, so they’re currently being rehabituated. Habituation seems quite well underway, the group again allows one person to walk with them while they forage. Only one of the subordinate immigrant males is missing. It returns later that day, fortunately.
The Aztecs meerkat family
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Close to the farmhouse we meet Sophie who just finished weighing Aztecs, after an eventful morning including a puff adder encounter. I decide to stay with Aztecs for some time while the others head back to the farmhouse.
Aztecs are a splinter of Whiskers, and a very small and young group, so they are very alert. The three more experienced females are frequently on the watch, while the four subadults forage loudly. The only male is the youngest, too young to serve as a dominant male. They only move some 50 meters within the 40 minutes I’m with them, including a lot of alarming, but also a lot of laying flat on their bellies in the shade. At some point Murray the youngest is left behind while fiercely foraging in a bush, and he doesn’t notice until his group is out of sight. Due to the wind he can’t hear them. He obviously gets nervous and starts to look around, standing on his hind legs and peering in each direction for about five minutes. This shows also what habituation means: A tame animal would probably run towards the human, expecting to find help – but not a habituated meerkat. To Murray I am just a weird animal. Finally one of the group appears from behind a bush, and Murray speeds to rejoin his family. They go on foraging as if nothing happened.
JJ is already with Tim and Marta, preparing lunch – I join them just at the right time. After lunch we again discuss the website project.
The Lazuli meerkat family
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At 5 pm we leave for Lazuli, with Rob. He’s only doing the evening weights. Lazuli, who had been in the center of the reserve, have by now moved down the riverbed to the “A side” of the Heights farm, some 3 km West of the farmhouse. They currently border Aztecs and Young Ones to the East and Elveera to the South. They are led by female Aretha (with radiocollar) and her brother J. Alfred Prufrock, after the former dominant male Padloper recently died; Aretha seems to be generally accepted as the dominant female, but her younger sister Diana is obviously bigger, and very often asserts dominance. Aretha also never had a successful litter since taking over dominance from her mother Eleusine more than a year ago.
We find them on the Southern riverbank, already close to their burrow. They are all extremely nervous – first I think it is because of the sheep in the riverbed, but judging from their persistance it must be something more dangerous. Finally Rob spots a Tawny Eagle some 300 m away, on a tree. The effect is stunning: The meerkats alarm, then groom, then alarm again, bobbing their heads up and down, jump around with raised tails – for a full hour! Lazuli still groom much more than Frisky the day before. Interestingly, Aretha very often grooms subordinate meerkats – maybe another sign that she is not such an aggressive dominant female.
Lazuli are one of the groups with TB incidents; two of the meerkats show clear signs of TB infection. The disease has been there when the project started in 1993, but is still of major concern to everyone, and from several discussions we learn that many things are unknown. But with three groups recently eradicated by the disease, and a forth on the way, it will remain one of the most important problems that needs to be investigated. Seven groups didn’t have TB fatalities so far. Sadly it is several of the previously mighty groups that are dwindling now. What is clear is that most if not all animals now have bovine TB, so chances are low that infections between humans and meerkats occur. But still, utmost care is taken to keep the disease from spreading further, and to not spread the disease to uninfected groups with the researchers or rather their gear (e.g. backbacks of infected groups) as vectors. Julian, the PhD student studying TB in meerkats, is unfortunately not onsite, it will be interesting to see what comes out of his work.
Rob succeeds during the Lazuli’s alarming commotion to weigh all but two, female Landie and subadult Papillon. They have been around however when whe arrived, a few meters away, so Rob assumes they went down in that burrow. At the same time as Rob completes weighing, the meerkats get really nervous – the eagle has taken off and is no longer seen. A few of the meerkats start to make move calls and move away – dashing to the next burrow 100 m away. The whole group, excluding the two missing animals, follows them. It takes 15 more minutes of nervous sprints and a lot of head-bobbing until they start to go down that burrow. The last is Mungo Jerry – until her sister Diana pops up again after 2 minutes and checks one last time for the eagle.
Dinner is ready when we come home – Alta prepared a ham and veggie quiche.
We leave at 7 am with volunteer David and MSc student Irene. Rascals currently stay on the “B-side”, South of the main road on a farm that was a hunting farm until recently, but now mainly hosts cattle. To the Northwest they share borders with Whiskers, but there is currently no habituated group to the East. We park at a windmill and walk 700 m to the sleeping burrow. Even from our car we spot a martial eagle on a tree – maybe the one that took half of the Rascals group some time ago when he or she had chicks. Also the previous dominants, Yeca and Spofl, were predated, only her radio-collar was found in a tree.
Currently dominant are Blondie and her brother Harvey. Blondie as well as her littermate Fool wear radio-collars and heart rate monitors. Irene studies the reaction of meerkats to certain vocalisations, on a heart rate level. The monitors are tiny and usually used for lab rats. They are inserted by a vet, and obviously they do not disturb the animals, as their behaviour and the social interactions remain unchanged.
First up is Coati, one of the older males, but he quickly vanishes again. The group is very hesitant in coming up to sun – maybe they have had an encounter with the martial eagle yesterday. Only after 8 am the group is out and Irene can start with her experiments while they are sunning. Fool, her focus animal, indeed behaves like any other meerkat, I can’t notice anything special about him during the experiment other than that he wears a radiocollar. David meanwhile refreshes the group’s dye marks. After her experiments Irene returns to the farm to analyse the data collected, while the Rascal group and ourselves continue with the morning routines – weighing (which is more difficult now since the meerkats already start foraging) and foraging. We also encounter a group of four Pied Babblers, the study subject of Krys, but they don’t seem to be habituated.
The area is nice, open plains with many trees and bushes, and not much high grass. The meerkats spread over a considerable area while foraging – but also frequently come together in a predator alarm. The eagle is still to be seen. During the three hours of observation (starting when the group leaves the burrow) we see many food competitions involving several of the group’s members, but Blondie whose dominance position is still unstable frequently forms the center of such competitions. There are not many raised guards, but we observe two bolt hole renovations. The group moves quite fast in an Eastern direction, to a place where even David has never been before – over two fences, not just one. Our three hours of observation are up, but weighing is impossible due to the wind that just picked up. The wind also has another effect: The Rascals get more and more nervous, and go on guard duty more often. It seems the wind interferes with them hearing their sentinel calls, or just hearing anything. A sudden gush of wind then drives them all into the bolt hole a few of them were just renovating. The opening is big enough to see 17 meerkats piled up in one small hole. After a while they start to come out – each of them feeling the sudden urge to scent-mark the entrance. We leave them with the picture of one young Rascal hanging around in the bolthole entrance wondering about the world outside… Getting back we heard from Marta that she had a visit of Aztecs just at her house.
The Whiskers meerkat family
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Our short stay at the KMP is drawing to an end, and we still haven’t seen Whiskers the Meerkat Manor movie stars – since they were always busy with the movie crew and the Earthwatchers. On the other hand, they are close to the farm house. So we just ask if we can see the Whiskers on our own, promising to not interfere with the movie crew. The movie crew will only arrive later, since they plan to pay a visit to Zaphod first – as Zaphod and some other Whisker males have decided to go on a roving expedition.
The Whiskers have been led by Rocket Dog since her mother Flower died in January 2007. Male dominance has been shared by Zaphod (the former dominant male), if he is around, and the oldest of his sons. For the sake of Meerkat Manor it was decided that both Rocket Dog and Zaphod wear a radio collar.
So JJ and myself walk over the “Young Ones plains” (that has become the “Whiskers plains” in the meantime) to the far end where the group had been last spotted – without a radio antenna, just equipped with our keen eyes. But they fail us, seems the Whiskers are still far away. So we just sit and enjoy the vista from the red dune over the plain and the dim light of a sun clouded by dust – until we see the film crew, Ralph (the Oxford Scientific cameraman) and Helen (the ex-volunteer/scientific advisor) appear at the other end of the plain. However, they also can’t track the group with their antenna, seems they are still foraging in the dunes. We walk towards each other, and I finally see two meerkats scurrying over the dunes. The 27 Whiskers who currently form the main group are so spread over the dunes that they can’t be seen properly. First of all JJ and myself witness a funny food competition. Little Amira (of the youngest litter) finds a millipede, and is immediately rounded up by Rocket Dog the dominant female. But Amira cedes only a little piece to big sister, who leaves the scene being barked at by Amira. Jogu is no better and tries to steal another bit – but to no avail, Amira won’t let him have any. She puts up a fight for about three minutes before she can enjoy her feast!
Both the movie crew and myself set on our tasks of taking footage/pictures, but it gets more difficult by the minute, with the sun setting in the haze. Ralph and Helen soon give up and leave. I was given the task to bring back a picture of Petra, so JJ and myself try to spot her amongst the dune. JJ finally succeeds, and Petra even poses kindly – as if she knew that a fan wanted her picture! With the bad light conditions, her pictures are amongst the few that are in focus… Less lucky with most of the other movie stars, we notice a fork-tailed drongo sitting on a nearby bush. He lets us approach, and even seems to want to land on JJ’s leg. Ringed white and red, it seems that we encountered a habituated drongo – they will form the focus of Tom Flower’s PhD on cheating, because drongos cheat meerkats into leaving their prey to the drongos.
The Whiskers now start to settle down and groom each other, and after a while the whole group can be seen united around the burrow – for the first time we’re with them. We also settle down and just watch them go along with their evening routines while listening to the barking geckoes that chime in. It all has a very relaxed, almost magical touch to it – so much different than my previous visit at Whiskers two years ago, when they evicted De La Soul, chased evicted Mozart, and war-danced the Lazuli rovers JD and Bobby all in one afternoon. The Whiskers don’t seem to hasten now, even though the sun has long settled. And it is rather dark when they suddenly start to alarm – only to calm down but very attentively look into one direction, all of them. I start taking pictures with my camera steadied on my knees (instead of my Gorillapod left at the farm), of the funny scene of both the Whiskers and JJ straining their eyes to see what it is that moves. After a while, Rocket Dog decides she has had enough of it and walks towards the burrow entrance. It seems that JJ and myself are quicker in identifying the animal as a hare, for the Whiskers remain attentive. But then, in the blink of an eye, or rather in exactly 20 sec, 23 of the 27 Whiskers have gone down. The four others remain out for a while, and it is Rufus, the youngest, who goes down last.
We walk over the plain to Tim’s and Marta’s house and are invited for a Gin and Tonic. After dinner we join the two of them for a night game drive through the reserve on the back of the bakkie (pick-up) – to spot the spring hares Marta has been mentioning. But first we encounter two genets with their ringed tails dangling from the trees they took refuge in, followed by lots of springbok and steenbok, two porcupines engaged in a fight, and several spring hares. The latter look like kangaroos in how they jump, only that these miniature kangaroos have black-tipped bushy tails. It is on the “Young Ones plain” a.k.a. Whiskers plain where their hopping comes to a finale: It’s the sheer amount of them that turns this barren plain by day to a hopping frenzy at night.
- Подпись автора
Человек должен делать то что он захочет несмотря на личные обстоятельства и опасности потому что это основной принцип морали человека
Мы сделаем это не потому что это легко а потому что это трудно
Ужели скажите весь мир наш таков
Нельзя нам прожить всю жизнь без врагов
Кто дорогою идёт
К кому дорога приведёт
Если угодно будет судьбе
Враг и не скроет кто он тебе
Но если вдруг решит он подсластится
Котёночком он сможет притворится
Тогда держись дружок держись
За что держись ? Естественно за жизнь
На явных смотриш ты бестрашней
Но тайные враги опасней
Стихотворная характеристика моего знака Зодиака
Венера и луна вошли в его ментальность
Чувствительность и вкус чуть-чуть синтиментальность
Да он упрям да лезет напролом
зато дилентатизм вот это не о нём
Трудолюбив и терпелив
Надёжен Постоянен справедлив
Однако и консервативен и к сожалению ревнив
Советов умных ему можно не давать
Он их не слушает и вряд ли будет исполнять
Но присмотритесь вот они Тельцы
Воители Вожди и Мудрецы
Шекспир Мария Медичи и Робеспьер и Кромвель
Бальзак Брамс Фрейд про Ленина мы помним
Делакруа и Трумен и Екатерина
Довольно странная наметилась картина
Смешались все и так через века
Идёт Телец с упрямостью быка
Нет нет он в общем-то миролюбив
По пустякам невздорен не гневлив
Но бойся если рядом друг Телец
Когда терпению его придёт конец
Он двести раз попробует на зуб
Совсем не потому что туп Телец и глуп
А потому что перед каждым шагом
Ему сто раз себя проверить надо
И с памятью Тельцу чертовски повезло
Он долго помнит и добро и зло
Ах! Милый мой я признаюсь
Люблю тебя и чуточку боюсь
И один человек может что-то изменить но попробовать должен каждый
). They finally settle around their sleeping burrow, watching the scenery. The scales come out, and a bit later one after one file down the burrow. Thundercat is the last one to go down. 
