BobHarris.com - Friday Pudublogging: Springbok edition

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Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

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Friday Pudublogging: Springbok edition

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Friday, 18 February 2005

With Super 12 rugby season set to start next week, let's say hello to a springbok, symbol of South African rugby.

(For those who don't follow rugby, the Super 12 is a competition between sides from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Super 12 matches tend toward a freewheeling, high-scoring variety of play some folks quite prefer to the careful, strategic mud-grunting of its northern hemisphere counterpart. And because FOX television is profoundly evil, this year they're no longer showing a full slate of Super 12 matches in America. Next year, they are planning to send Sean Hannity door-to-door so he can personally punch your favorite pet in the mouth.)

As regular readers know, Australian wallabies and New Zealand kiwis are plenty wonderful. But in sheer damn puduness, they can't compare to the South African springbok.

I took a few springbok photos in South Africa a while back, but they were all from about a hundred yards away and might as well have been pictures of large blurred squirrels. And so of course I can't post those.

Besides, the South African Giant Blurred Squirrel is a magnificent species in its own right.

Fortunately, this site has recently been befriended by your kids' probable favorite author Janell Cannon (creator of Stellaluna and a bunch of other great stuff), who is the sort of person you can mention this to, and who will then immediately send you her own pictures of springboks, because of course she has pictures of springboks on hand, just lying around, waiting for someone to need them on the eve of rugby season. Naturally.

So that's Janell's picture of a springbok. And this sentence here is my sincere thanks.

And the hundreds of tiny pellets in the background are, um, what springboks leave behind in order to find their way. At least that's what the springboks tell people.

Apparently springboks get lost a lot.

Springboks, incidentally, often play rugby in the wild. It hasn't been filmed properly by naturalists, but I understand it looks a bit like bighorn sheep ramming their heads over territory. Except it's fifteen boks to a side, and there's a ball involved.

Sometimes a Giant Blurred Squirrel or two will take part.

Although you really can't tell if you're not up close.