17 - Sparky’s ‘hide & stay dry’ World

Hello, Sparky here.

Ø  After a week of crocodile scare and the subsequent relief, we have all settled down into our quiet ‘rainy season’ routine.

Ø  When it rains, which is quite a lot these days, most of us avoid moving around – we smaller mammals, don’t particularly like getting wet and then have our bodies work extra hard to maintain the body temperature. We settle down in our hollows, dens and nests either in group or by ourselves and basically try to keep dry and stay warm.

Ø  Most birds have oil glands and when they groom themselves, which is a daily elaborate routine by itself, they spread the oil all over their feathers waterproofing themselves, so, even if they do get wet, water just runs off their bodies. Owls are an exception here, their feathers aren’t waterproof. They seem to have traded that for having extra light feathers for an absolute quiet flight to surprise their prey. So, owls will not be able to go about their normal life in rains, they would rather go hungry than get wet and be sorry later.

Ø  Insects are particularly rendered immobile in rains. A raindrop hitting a small insect could at best topple them or at worst render them wingless or hurt, so they prefer to hide under vegetation or such natural rain barriers and wait out the rain.

Ø  Not all of us need to hide thus or be out of action in rains, amphibians love the rains. Need I start off about the frogs again? I think I have spoken enough of their activities in rain for you to have formed a good idea of their fondness for rain.

Ø  Reptiles have their own share of problems with rains. Snakes’ underground hiding places may get filled with water and they emerge on the ground and this is when many humans encounter snakes and the tug between ‘survival and superiority’ takes place with the snakes emerging the loser most of the times. Even mighty crocodiles could get washed off their homes with unpleasant consequences for everyone, including the crocodile.

Ø  Well, that’s quite a lot of facts to give you a fair idea of how we in the animal world deal with the rains. On Banyan Island many of us make a run to the Otters’ burrow to borrow books especially during the lull in the rain. These books keep us busy during the dull and long rainy days. Now that all of us have come back to our senses about the books and mangoes. There being no more ‘give a mango and borrow a book’ and no more ‘taste a mango, fall in love with it and then it’s your problem how you go about getting them’ we have all fallen back to our earlier days of camaraderie. Life is so much better for all of us now. The crocodile without having interacted with any of us (a mighty lucky thing for us) taught us a lesson or two before he left. 

Ø  The Woolly-necks though are still staying aloof from the rest of us and are acting ‘hard-to-impress’. It shouldn’t have bothered any of us but as we are all guilty of having made the initial mistake by going on a ‘mass-ignoring’ spree, it now hurts us that we treated them wrongly. Now, we want to rectify the ill-opinion they are harbouring against us. Why is it that sometimes we go out of our way to impress strangers and don’t necessarily care what our friends think of us?

Ø  Many of the bee-eaters who had their nests in the cliff of the river bank are a very busy lot these days. The nests of many bee-eaters had been flooded by the river water which was flowing higher than usual in the previous weeks. Now, these birds are busy excavating holes in other places. Such is the pace of life in the animal world, faced with a loss of that magnitude there is no time to sit and mourn. We need to get on with life and the new activity to rectify the loss takes care of the grief.  

Here are a few activities for the week to keep you busy for a while if you have time to spare.

·         Solve the riddles one by one and get a word that solves another riddle. The final word describes our present situation and each other word denotes our activity of the moment.

	Rain or shine we all do this, it keeps us clean and neat. Bird or beast, which takes care of oneself thus, is difficult to beat.
	One activity for a rainy day is to do nothing at all, Conserve energy and effort for later on.
	One can do this of a new skill, Do this in leisure time, of your own will Someday it will be handy, to your own great thrill.
	You do this when you build or design something A DIY or a complex machine, there’s joy in making.
	Ideas come when you do this, Sit down, imagine and let your mind whizz.
	Sometimes let activity cease, Do this and imagine a world, one better and of peace.
	The final riddle – first letter of the answers above will also solve this riddle below:
	Calm and at peace, Tranquil and at ease. Such that your emotions no one can tease.

·         Continuing with the ‘similar looking hence ‘could be confusing’ words’:

With the _____ (rise/rice) in the water level in the river many bee-eaters’ nest got flooded and was lost. The bee-eaters elected a ______ (counsel/council) to select the best _____ (sight/site) to build their new nests in.

The tree nesting birds _______ (adviced/advised) the bee-eaters to build a nest in the tree so their nests would not be destroyed in floods but such an _______ (advice/advise) was of no use as the bee-eaters have never nested anywhere but in a _______ (hole/whole) in the ground and would not know how to build a nest on a tree.

Without knowing these ______ (bare/bear) minimum of facts, giving ________ (advices/advises) is a waste of everyone’s time. So, it is important to know the _______ (hole/whole) of the facts before giving _______ (counsel/council) to others.

·         We had a puzzle involving similes 2 weeks back. Here’s one with Metaphors.  

Both similes and metaphors are figures of speech used to beautify the description and paint a mental image for the reader. Similes use ‘like’ ‘as’ to compare 2 unrelated things whereas metaphors compare 2 unrelated things and imply one is the other. Here are a few popular metaphors, could you put the second column in order, so the metaphors are complete.

All the world	of a lion
It is raining	of diamonds
She is the	of gold
A heart	is a stage
Noise is	Sadness
Sea of	of their life
Light	music to his ears
He has a heart	cats and dogs
He swam in the sea	apple of my eye

‘Little readers’ Section’

• As we live in homes, so do animals, birds and insects. Here are a few photos of homes of a few animals. Could you match the animals with their homes.

• Here’s another one from the ‘imagination series’ by Mr. Ankit Agrawal, our regular reader and contributor. 
• 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

Answers to last week’s puzzles:

·         Solve the riddles one by one and get a word that solves another riddle. The final word describes the mood of the moment and the other words, in order describe our ‘croc experience’.

Petrified	If you are this, you are out of your wits and terrified, One moment you are blank and the next you wonder what happened.
Elude	On our minds was only this – by any means to keep away from danger. The only thing we plotted was how to stay alive longer.
Nightmare	Our slumber was filled with this, but, when we woke, the reality we faced was worse than that.
Sombre	Dark and dull is how the world looked, This is how we felt, of joy and laughter robbed.
Introspective	Why such a misfortune had befallen us, we wondered. This was our mood, if anything we could do, we pondered.
Verifying	It all seemed so untrue, it felt like a nightmare. We took to doing this often to see if the trouble had gone or still there.
Elated	With the trouble gone, we were happy and jubilant. We were this – happier than happy and exultant.
	The final riddle – first letter of the answers above will also solve this riddle below:
Pensive	The tragedy that struck us we couldn’t understand, Sheer bad luck to have the trouble on our land. This is how our mood was – twisted like ampersand.

• Here’s the crossword puzzle for the week. All the words rhyme with ‘crocodile’ which means almost all of them (in fact, all of them except one) ends with ‘ile’.

·         Continuing with the ‘similar looking hence ‘could be confusing’ words’

1.        After a refreshing rain when the sun comes out, the rainbow, the refreshed greenery, the sparkling river, the blue sky altogether look like a Claud Monet painting.

2.        Last week when the crocodile was around, Mr. Goldback said when we are rid of the dinosaur we will get all together and have a celebration.

3.        After the crocodile left all of us except the Woolly-necks had a party.

4.        When Mr. Goldback invited the Woolly-necks for the party, they did not accept the invitation as they had a strict deadline to finish building the nest.

5.        We keep staring at the site where we had first spotted the crocodile and still can’t believe he’s actually gone.

6.        All of us keep looking around us scared that we might any moment sight the huge crocodile again.

•     During the rains as the butterflies rest, they agreed to be set into a puzzle. Find the next butterfly in the sequence: