8 - Sparky’s ‘Hide & Live Another Day’ World

Hi, Sparky here.

Ø  Do you sometimes feel like sleeping all day? Wake up for a couple of snacks but otherwise just lie still in the shade, because if you move about when the Sun’s at its peak, you might get baked and become a snack yourself. That’s pretty much the state of affairs right now. We squirrels complete the whole day’s task in the mornings and then just laze around quietly conserving energy from the Sun who is on a mission to zap out everyone’s energy and enthusiasm. If there’s any bit of pending work, we do it as the Sun starts to go down.

Ø  A letter I received from a friend of mine from USA quotes Mr. Sam Keen, an American author and philosopher who said that ‘Deep Summer is when laziness finds respectability’. True, indeed.  

Ø  All of us have our own way of handling the scorching weather conditions. Many animals including reptiles follow the ‘hide and live another day’ strategy. Reptiles are cold blooded and cannot regulate their body temperature, so if they are exposed to harsh sunlight even for a couple of hours, they could overheat and die. They hide under rocks, in holes made by other animals and insects like anthills, as the deeper one goes under the ground, the cooler it is.

Ø  Many resort to ‘pant or perish’. Breathing heavily cools the body by reducing the body temperature. In hot weather it’s not just the dogs who pant, you will see birds with their beaks open, they are also panting like the dogs, but doing it quietly unlike the noisy dogs. Birds also follow the ‘dip and sip’ strategy. They take constant dips in water and also a few sips while they are at it. 

Ø  You know, some animals hibernate in winter, some creatures have a similar response to deal with heat, and it’s called Estivation. Animals like toads and snails go into deep sleep, conserving energy. They stay hidden underground and make it through the scorching hot days.

Ø  Some animals look cool even when cooling off. There are many animals with long ears on which are many blood vessels through which they lose the excess heat. Animals like elephants, some types of rabbits and some types of foxes have this kind of long ears. If you have seen elephants flapping their ears, they are using the ‘flutter and feel better’ stratagem.

Ø  Elephants also have other plans up their trunk, like frequent visits to waterholes and delayed departure from there. They have an amazing ability to remember all the watering holes they have ever been to which they also widen to everyone’s benefit. And the ultimate of it all has to be a mud bath at the watering holes. The mud coat acts like a sunscreen and insect guard.

Ø  Although, humans aren’t cold blooded creatures and can regulate their body temperature, without their fans and air conditioners they would find the going very tough. I gathered this from the conversation of the father and son who had come few weeks back. They came back this week, early in the morning one day and stayed for a couple of hours. The son was complaining to his dad that it was hot and would rather go back to the cool interiors of his house and his dad explained how it was important to come out in the Sun for Vitamin D especially in summer when they otherwise stay indoors all the time to avoid the Sun. The father and son stayed for a very short time, hopefully next time they stay longer and I have some stories to write about them.

Ø  The day was at its peak and I was having a nap 3 days back when an old friend of mine dropped by. We got talking and remembered many of our adventures when we were 2 naughty little brats.  What I want to share with you all are not the stories of our adventures (I will reserve those for future) but his personal story.

This is a story of a young Indian Roller. As babies our nests were close to each other and so we became good friends. My friend had once told me how he was sad that his mother was not as beautiful as the other rollers. Indian Rollers are very brightly coloured birds. They sport all kinds of weird sounding colours on their body - purplish blue, prussian blue, purplish lilac and ochre - these are just the weird sounding ones, they also have some of the ‘everyday’ colours on them as well. So, now you might be able to imagine why his mother’s lack of these colours bothered my friend. His mother is Leucistic, meaning she has a condition because of which the colours on her feathers are duller than those of other rollers. Other than this bit, she was a smart and kind bird. Our mothers were and still are good friends. My friend never did speak about this to his mother but I guess somehow his mother sensed this. It was a cause of great anxiety to both the mother and son, without each talking about it.

Then one day in summer last year, my friend’s uncle plunge-dived into the river, like rollers do while wanting to take a bath. It so happened that when my friend’s uncle dived in, a turtle was swimming up to the surface for a breath. The bird hit the turtle’s hard back and collapsed in the water. A lapwing bird which was nearby let out alarm calls which alerted my friend’s mother who immediately dived in to rescue her brother. She pulled him up to the surface and out of water. She kept pumping the water out of her brother till he revived and sat up, a little shaken but otherwise alright. Since that day, my mother’s friend has been looked up to by many birds. Many consult her when they are in difficult situation and she always guides them out of the problem with her wisdom. My friend since that day learnt to see and appreciate the real inner beauty of his mother - her courage and wisdom. Beauty is only skin-deep or in this case-feather-shallow, it’s what’s within that defines one. 

Here are some activities for you, keep a cool head and you can solve these easily.

• Solve the below riddles, all of them are more or less connected to weather.

	If you are after something that’s impossible to achieve, Then you are chasing me. Later, for wasted time and effort, you will grieve.
	If you are full of ideas that will not work, Then in this, you have got your head stuck
	Make this when the sun shines, Make most of the opportunity, before the tide turns.
	Things are looking good and sound, There’s not one of me, in the sky to be found.
	When things get rough and a friend doesn’t stay together, Beware, he’s not a true friend, but one just for this weather.

• An animal has a particular skin pattern on its skin for a particular reason. Like the rosette pattern (many spots joined together, looking like a rose) for camouflage or spots and strips for blending into the vegetation. Here, could you match the animals to their skin pattern:
  
• Fill the crossword puzzle with the names of the countries in which the landmarks, given in the clues are located. The black squares are spaces.

• Now, for some mathematical puzzles:

1.    A Squirrel ate 2 mangoes weighing 500 grams. The seed in one mango was 100 grams and the seed in the other mango was 75 grams, so how much of the fruit did the squirrel eat?

2.    A Bee takes 1 gram of nectar from a flower. 10 bees have together taken 1 kilogram of nectar. If all the bees work the same, then how many flowers has 1 bee visited in order for 10 of them to make the 1 kilogram of nectar?

3.    There are a 1000 trees in the forest, each tree sheds 100 grams of leaves every day. How much leaves are shed by the trees in a week?

4.    A Baya weaver bird uses 20 grams of dry grass and 30 grams of palm leaves in a day to weave his nest. It takes him 18 days to finish building the nest. For 10 days he collects and weaves and for another 8 days he just weaves. How many grams of dry grass and palm fronds does he use in his nest?

5.    A pair of Bee-eater birds use their sharp claws to dig a hole of 1 cm every day in the vertical bank of the riverside. The male digs 60 mm and female digs 40 mm each day. If the hole is to be 20 cm deep, how many days would the nest be ready in and how much of the nest would have been dug by the male and how much of it by the female?      

See you all next week with more news, activities and answers to this week’s puzzles.

In the meanwhile, if you would like to write to me, email me at Sparkyatbanyan@gmail.com

You can access a PDF copy of this magazine issue in the below link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eo2YF2aS6NpLzD3Di6zE-E5X9evR7xhX

Answers to last week’s puzzles:

• Solve the riddles one by one and get a word that solves another riddle.

Cat	I am Crookshanks and I am Tom, The mighty Aslan and cute Simba are also just me.
Horse	Greeks entered the city of Troy hidden within me, The Black beauty in the story by the same name is also me.
Owl	I am the wisest creature in The Hundred Acre Wood, I am Headwig, who by Harry Potter stood.
Rabbit	I am Winnie-the-Pooh’s close friend, It was down my hole that Alice fell to reach Wonderland
Unicorn	I look like Black Beauty but my forehead has a horn, Am a creature of imagination, many pages of literature I adorn.
Squirrel	I am the one who’s doing this writing, Scroll down, you will find me dung-eating.
	The final riddle – first letter of the answers above will also solve this riddle below:
CHORUS	Sing alone and it’s just a song to the ear, Sing in a group, together and it’s this we hear.

•  A Proverb is a saying based on common sense and experience. They develop with the language over time much like an Idiom. Here are some proverbs on animals which are jumbled up, can you match the 2 columns to form complete proverbs.

A bird in the hand	is worth two in the bush
The early bird	catches the worm
One swallow	does not make a summer
Birds of a feather	flock together
Honey catches	more flies than vinegar
Barking dogs	seldom bite
The leopard	cannot change his spots
If you pay peanuts	you get monkeys
When the cat is away	the mice will play
You cannot teach an old dog	new tricks
You can lead a horse to the water	but you cannot make him drink
You cannot run with the hare	and hunt with the hounds

•  Conjunctions are words that are used to connect other words and phrases together. ‘And’, ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘because’ and ‘so’ are few of the common conjunctions. Here’s a story for you but it will be complete only if you fill the blanks with the correct conjunctions.

My cousin, Champu loves chasing butterflies and dragonflies but her mother does not like it and says it is not a very nice thing to do because chasing something could either get her hurt or the flies could hurt themselves. Neither of it a nice thing to happen nor does it serve any purpose. But Champu never listened to her mother. She even had a diary where she recorded all the different kinds of butterflies and dragonflies she chased. She said it was her hobby.

One day in winter, Champu saw a Southern Birdwing Butterfly fly by. The butterfly was leisurely flying around as if playing music on the gentle breeze. Champu was immediately fascinated and took off after the butterfly but the butterfly was flying  but Champu could only follow her by running on the branches of the tree. While running after the butterfly, she nearly bumped into a snake which was slithering towards a sunny spot to bask in the warmth of the sun and snakes are cold blooded creatures and cannot control their body temperature so when it gets cold they become sluggish and cannot function properly. She was lucky that the snake hadn’t yet warmed up else she would have become ‘breakfast’ for the snake. Since that day, Champu learnt her lesson and does not go chasing after flies but watches them from a spot and she now agrees, this way no one gets hurt.                   

• Ms. Indlovu’s family photo:

• Now, for a mathematical puzzle. Find the next number in the sequence. For this, you will have to understand the relationship between the first 4 numbers, then apply the same logic and get the last number in the sequence. 

10	20	40	80	160
5	25	125	625	3125
3	5	7	11	13
50	100	200	400	800
20	27	34	41	48
4	8	12	16	20
3	6	11	19	30
2	4	8	16	32
8	10	14	20	28
100	125	175	250	350