34 - Sparky’s ‘Weather-Wise’ World

Hello, Sparky here.

Ø  This week, as is my wont I start by speaking of the weather, but not the weather of the week but the reason why I dwell on weather as much as I do. Recently a human teased me of how the magazine always starts with a weather report. My reply is a simple one, if I am hungry, I will think of food but if my next meal depends on the weather, then it is weather which would be on my mind. This is true for every living thing except perhaps the humans who live in a ‘bubble’.

   

Ø  If any of us in the animal world forget the weather it could well be our death knell. If a bear were to hibernate in summer then when would he eat and stock-up? If mountain goats and arctic foxes decide it’s not fashionable to sport a thick fur for winter they most likely will freeze to death. If birds who migrate from cold regions don’t fancy a long flight before temperatures drop they will soon drop dead. Such is our life, we live and prosper only if we unquestioningly trust and follow the instructions of Mother Nature.

 

Ø  Humans have created a world that has come to be almost detached from the world created by Mother Nature. Humans live in controlled environments and even short journeys out of their ‘bubble’ that are a matter of ‘discomfort’ is set right as quickly as possible by entering into another ‘bubble’, say, a journey from ‘home bubble’ to ‘office bubble’ involving a ‘transport’ bubble’ in between. Of course, this is not true of all humans – there are those who toil in scorching heat, those who live exposed to the vagaries of seasons – but a human who questions the importance of weather is not someone who lives by the seasons or by the dictates of Mother Nature.

 

Ø  Humans have made so much ‘progress’ that they have even made weather irrelevant.

o   Seasonal fruits are available through the year. If a plant is particularly stubborn and can’t be made to grow out of season, it’s soon rectified by transporting it from the other hemisphere or from a place where it is in season.

o   It could be raining cats and dogs and a human could turn up the heat within the house and enjoy an ice cream.

o   Freezing chill? No problem. Just wrap around a down jacket (made from feathers of ducks and geese) and carry on with life. Mother Nature equipped these birds to survive bone-chilling winters but how was She to have known of a new greedy and ambitious predator on the block?

o   Sweltering heat? What’s that? There’s no summer even for those living in the deserts in peak summer.

This list is endless but the consequence of their playing ‘God’ is reaching its logical end.

Ø  Mother Nature is patient but Her patience is wearing thin. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones – extreme weather conditions are becoming the norm.  Humans have thoughtlessly misused their privilege as a ‘thinking animal’ and we are all having to pay a price for it.  

 

Ø  While on this topic, I recall seeing a set of 4 paintings in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian Painter in 1573, these portrait paintings show the close relationship between humans and nature (at least of the humans of those times). This was painted at a time when disciplines such as botany and zoology were being pursued eagerly.  This was also a time when the seasons were not irrelevant as it is today to humans and they lived like the rest of us, in tune with nature and the changing seasons.

 

 

Ø  Each portrait represents a season and is made up of ‘nature’s bounty’ or otherwise of that season.

o   Spring is a young smiling woman adorned with a variety of flowers that grow abundantly in spring.  She has a lily-bud nose and a tulip ear. Her hair is made up of colourful flowers while her dress is a ‘jungle’ of green leaves with a daisy-necklace.

o   Summer is a woman made up of seasonal fruit and vegetables. Her smiling face reflects the benevolence of the season of sunshine and abundance in nature. Cherries adorn the hair and upper lip, the cheek is a peach with a cucumber nose and an eggplant ear. The eyebrow is an ear of wheat. The clothing is made of straw and an artichoke decorates the chest.

o   Autumn shows a surly man whose body is covered by a broken barrel and whose face has a pear for a nose, an apple for the cheek, a pomegranate for the chin and a mushroom for the ear, all ripe and ready for feasting.

o   Winter is an old man wrapped in a straw mat. His head is made up of an aged tree stump with the gnarled wood showing the wrinkles of age.  He has a swollen mushroom for a mouth and has a lemon and orange hanging from his clothing representing the frugal offering of the winter season.

 

Ø  Looking at these paintings makes me wonder. If humans know how important Nature is, how essential order and balance is in the natural world then why are they going around destroying their one and only earthly home?

 

Ø  In news from Banyan Island, I still keep bumping into animals and birds still munching on the fruits and berries from the fair last week. It’s a good thing it’s winter, had the fruits been hoarded this way for ‘later consumption’ in summer, there would have been a nasty stink on Banyan from all the rotting fruits.

 

Ø  Popularity of Mr. SBK, the stork-billed kingfisher who drew everyone’s caricatures in the fair last week is spreading by the day. This week he was invited to a get-together party on another island for drawing caricatures of all the revelers. Between invites like these and visitors (mainly birds) who come over to have their caricature drawn we hardly see Mr. SBK these days like we used to before the fair – hanging around with someone here, chatting with someone there, trying his best to make matters worse for someone else. I have got one thing to say to Mrs. Ulukah, the leader who is responsible for this transformation in Mr. SBK – ‘Mischief managed and how?’

Here are a few activities for this week. Amuse yourself with these puzzles and warm your heart.

·         Here’s a photo of an agricultural field’. Look at this photo and see how many words you can identify which begin with the letter ‘B’. Don’t limit yourself to just what you see, widen your imagination and look for intangible things as well.

·         Here’s a Crossword puzzle for the week – all the words end with the letters ‘tion’.

·         These are a few famous monuments from around the world – can you identify them:

 

·         In last week’s fair, I had my entire collection of jigsaw puzzles – 42 puzzles, to be precise – on display and for anybody to try it then or borrow it later. As promised last week, here is the list of the benefits that come of solving Jigsaw puzzles but you will have to solve a puzzle to get to the benefits.

 

Match the 2 columns below to get sensible words that are the benefits of solving jigsaw puzzles.

 

Brain	Reasoning
Increases Cognitive	Enhancement
Increases Spatial	Stress
Attention	Solving
Memory	Function
Increases	Blood pressure
Improves	Exercise
Relieves	Dopamine
Lowers	IQ
Increases	Mood
Problem	Self-confidence
Produces	to detail

 

Little Readers’ Section

·         Here is a photo of a beach, can you identify who belongs in the beach, who is a visitor and who is an intruder?

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: 

 

·         Here’s a photo of an intertidal beach or a ‘foreshore’, which is the part of the beach which is exposed at low tides and submerged at high tides.

    Look at this photo and see how many words you can identify which begin with the letter ‘C’. Don’t limit yourself to just what you see, widen your imagination and look for intangible things as well.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of answers. What has got exhausted is my ‘imagination’ and ‘inclination’.

 

o   Crab (though there are no crabs, the round mounds all around their holes were made by crabs while searching for food in the sand)

o   Clayey (the wet sand looks like clay)

o   Car (track of the car tyre)

o   Canine (Dog’s pugmark)

o   Cute (the bird’s feet marks)

o   Callousness (of someone driving on the foreshore)

o   Casualty (nature is a casualty of man’s apathy)

 

·         Match the words in the left column with the meanings in the right column.

·      We all live in a variety of habitat, eat a variety of food -  it has been fine-tuned over the millennia to be what it is today and this process of fine-tuning will continue as only if a species can adapt to changes will it survive and thrive. This is evolution.

 Birds have different types of feet to suit the environment they live in and to aid in a particular function like grasping, perching, catching, swimming and so on. In the puzzle below, can you match the feet on the left with the birds on the right? Asking where the bird lives and what it does will help with the matching.