Friday, September 23, 2005
I need sound financial advice
Urban wildlife log: sitting in the park having lunch today, I was quickly surrounded by pigeons and gulls looking to scavenge the kill of a larger predator such as myself. (Happily, the gulls here are a different species than we get in the U.S. [Larus hartlaubii, actually one of the world’s rarest gull species despite their omnipresence on the streets of Cape Town], so at least I’m getting to see some of the native avifauna “in the wild.”) I notice that one of the pigeons is apart from the rest of the flock, and seems more brazen than its conspecifics: slowly moving towards me from behind. It is then that I notice that this particular bird has no toes. Through some miracle of acquired alterations in gait and the extreme lightness of the avian body, it was managing to hobble along on nothing but little, scaly stubs. Man, did I feel sorry for that bird. So, while I jealously guarded my meal from all the other flying vermin, in the end I had to throw a few fries its way. It stumped determinedly along towards the prize, but of course it didn’t make it a third of the way there before six or so gulls had swooped in and devoured every crumb.
In other news: you want Basil E. Frankweilerian antics? Hoo lordy, I’ve had a lot of those lately. I’ve had quite a spate of getting locked in and out of South African museums in the past few weeks. Let me cover the “locked out” one first. This was several weeks ago when I was in Pretoria. It was a definite marathon day for skull measuring at the Council for Geosciences (located in the suburbs, while you may remember that I was staying in a museum in the city center, or more properly, centre). I got a ride back to town close to midnight, and when we got to the gate I was very disturbed to find that my key card was not working. Now, center of Pretoria at midnight is pretty darn sketchtacular place, especially if you’re in my situation: lugging around the laptop, calipers, and all your photographic equipment. Quite a predicament for me. So then, the guy who gave me a ride back from the Council (who is an utterly awesome chap, by the way) says, “Just climb the fence.” Now, a few things must be noted here. One, as aforementioned, I am carrying lots of heavy equipment. Two, the “fence” is a ten foot tall steel gate that was, obviously, not designed to facilitate clambering. Three, even in such dire straits, I am instinctively loath to perform an act that could so easily be misconstrued as illegality. But, time is of the essence, so I have at it. I started climbing the gate to the right of the entrance, as there is a cement step up along the edge, but my companion advised me to try the main section of the gate, which is a yet higher climb, but rendered easier by the presence of a cross bar through the middle which allows a better foothold. He admitted to having had to do this himself on a previous occasion. Sure enough, in my adrenalinized fear state, it wass an easy climb up and over the main gate. The laptop case was too much to carry, though, so I had left it behind. My associate then climbed halfway up the gate and tossed it over. Hit me on the head in doing so, but the equipment was fine, I was inside and good to go, and that was all that really mattered. Truthfully, I was pretty happy with how things turned out. It’s not every night that I get to pull a daring museum break-in. (Although the ease with which I accomplished it did not give me much faith in museum security.)
And speaking of a lack of faith in museum security, there’s the matter of being locked in the museum. That happened just the other night here in Cape Town. As usual, I had been working late: it was well after eight o’clock at this point (the museum closes at five). Two other visiting students had also been staying late, but they were tired, hungry, and clearly ready to go and inquired whether I would like to go out now too. You see, to get out we needed to go get the department head to unlock both the front gate and the sliding metal door on the ground floor (said door preventing any gate climbing in this case.) But there was a wee problem: the department head had already left. One of these other students had said that she saw him leaving with his bag earlier, but I had said that his office light was still on and he knows I’m working in here and can’t get out, so he wouldn’t just up and go. He’s probably working on the new display, I said. So we went to the new display, and found no one. So, we figured that surely there must be someone else working late in the museum offices, and systematically swept all the floors. No one. The office section of the museum has a central courtyard, so if you look out of one of the inner windows, you can see all the offices in the building. Not a single light was on, which did not raise our hopes of finding someone to let us out, and also kind of creeped us out. Having established that there were no remaining scientists, we thought we could find a security guard at the entrance to the gate. So we went down by the gate and entered the security office, but no one was there. There was a list of museum phone numbers on the wall, though, so we got the idea to call security, wherever they were. But there was no number for them: we were in the security office, so of course they wouldn’t have their own number because they would know it! Then, I remembered that I had printed out contact information for all the people I would be working with on my trip, and thought that it might have a cell number for the department head here. Sure enough, it did. We tried the phone in the security office, but unfortunately it seemed that like all the other museum phones it required some prefix before you could dial out, a prefix that we sadly did not know. Luckily, one of the students had a cell phone on him, and I made the call. I got a “Hello?” on the other end and got no more than a few words of explanation out before the cell phone died. This was moving into serious horror movie territory here (HODAG!), and as such, we did the stupid horror movie protagonists thing and decided to split up. One of us would stay at the security office in case either security or the department head came back, and the other two would enter the public, display section of the museum. If a security guard would be anywhere, it would be there. I ended up heading over to the displays. I routinely wander around in darkness at the Field without much worry, but I will admit to being in a bit of unease when we started blundering into pitch black exhibit halls here (it was also about now when we realized exactly how much we had been emulating stupid horror movie protagonists.) There were a number of thrills and spills along the way (Do you have any idea how frightening it is to walk into a dead end hall and in the tiny fraction of twilight available realize that you have walked into a giant squid? Especially because in the seconds in which this occurs, you don’t realize that you’ve walked into a giant squid model, but rather, that you are surrounded by some creepy thing that just happens to be one of the most primally unsettling forms known to man.) Eventually, though, we found a lit hallway, and passing various eerie tribal masks and whale skeletons, we made it to the front desk. Which, as you have probably guessed, was empty. We sat right down at the main security station right there, watching the entire museum on closed circuit TV. Not a soul to be seen. Furthermore, we recognized several of the rooms that we had walked through. As such, if there was a security guard monitoring things anywhere in the building, they must have seen us. The fact that there was no response to our highly suspicious nighttime meanderings through closed halls cemented our belief that we were, indeed, the only people left in the museum and, as such, completely trapped. Not giving up, we looked around for any avenue of escape, and then noted that between the automatic door leading into the main area of the museum and the massive (securely locked and bolted) front door, there was a pay phone. Fully having accepted our cinematic situation at this point but trying to extricate ourselves from its accompanying character foibles, we decided that one of us should stay back while the other goes through the automatic door, because given our luck, it would probably lock behind us, trapping us in an even more hellish limbo. But not so: it was functional both ways. So the two of us went to the pay phone, pulled out a calling card, dialed the department head’s cell again, and got a busy signal. We laughed for a good ten minutes, called again, and still got the busy signal. We tried one more time before realizing that we had run over the thirteenth son of a gypsy werewolf last Halloween and we were clearly going to be punished for all time. I mean, before heading back to the new display that we had tried in the first place, miraculously finding one dude who was indeed working late and must have just stepped out for a moment when we were there before, reuniting with the third (decidedly non-murdered) member of our party, and being let out to go about our merry way. So I guess the moral here is that if you’re looking to pull a museum heist, or Phantom-like, simply haunt the halls by night, South Africa is the place to do it.
Urban wildlife log: sitting in the park having lunch today, I was quickly surrounded by pigeons and gulls looking to scavenge the kill of a larger predator such as myself. (Happily, the gulls here are a different species than we get in the U.S. [Larus hartlaubii, actually one of the world’s rarest gull species despite their omnipresence on the streets of Cape Town], so at least I’m getting to see some of the native avifauna “in the wild.”) I notice that one of the pigeons is apart from the rest of the flock, and seems more brazen than its conspecifics: slowly moving towards me from behind. It is then that I notice that this particular bird has no toes. Through some miracle of acquired alterations in gait and the extreme lightness of the avian body, it was managing to hobble along on nothing but little, scaly stubs. Man, did I feel sorry for that bird. So, while I jealously guarded my meal from all the other flying vermin, in the end I had to throw a few fries its way. It stumped determinedly along towards the prize, but of course it didn’t make it a third of the way there before six or so gulls had swooped in and devoured every crumb.
In other news: you want Basil E. Frankweilerian antics? Hoo lordy, I’ve had a lot of those lately. I’ve had quite a spate of getting locked in and out of South African museums in the past few weeks. Let me cover the “locked out” one first. This was several weeks ago when I was in Pretoria. It was a definite marathon day for skull measuring at the Council for Geosciences (located in the suburbs, while you may remember that I was staying in a museum in the city center, or more properly, centre). I got a ride back to town close to midnight, and when we got to the gate I was very disturbed to find that my key card was not working. Now, center of Pretoria at midnight is pretty darn sketchtacular place, especially if you’re in my situation: lugging around the laptop, calipers, and all your photographic equipment. Quite a predicament for me. So then, the guy who gave me a ride back from the Council (who is an utterly awesome chap, by the way) says, “Just climb the fence.” Now, a few things must be noted here. One, as aforementioned, I am carrying lots of heavy equipment. Two, the “fence” is a ten foot tall steel gate that was, obviously, not designed to facilitate clambering. Three, even in such dire straits, I am instinctively loath to perform an act that could so easily be misconstrued as illegality. But, time is of the essence, so I have at it. I started climbing the gate to the right of the entrance, as there is a cement step up along the edge, but my companion advised me to try the main section of the gate, which is a yet higher climb, but rendered easier by the presence of a cross bar through the middle which allows a better foothold. He admitted to having had to do this himself on a previous occasion. Sure enough, in my adrenalinized fear state, it wass an easy climb up and over the main gate. The laptop case was too much to carry, though, so I had left it behind. My associate then climbed halfway up the gate and tossed it over. Hit me on the head in doing so, but the equipment was fine, I was inside and good to go, and that was all that really mattered. Truthfully, I was pretty happy with how things turned out. It’s not every night that I get to pull a daring museum break-in. (Although the ease with which I accomplished it did not give me much faith in museum security.)
And speaking of a lack of faith in museum security, there’s the matter of being locked in the museum. That happened just the other night here in Cape Town. As usual, I had been working late: it was well after eight o’clock at this point (the museum closes at five). Two other visiting students had also been staying late, but they were tired, hungry, and clearly ready to go and inquired whether I would like to go out now too. You see, to get out we needed to go get the department head to unlock both the front gate and the sliding metal door on the ground floor (said door preventing any gate climbing in this case.) But there was a wee problem: the department head had already left. One of these other students had said that she saw him leaving with his bag earlier, but I had said that his office light was still on and he knows I’m working in here and can’t get out, so he wouldn’t just up and go. He’s probably working on the new display, I said. So we went to the new display, and found no one. So, we figured that surely there must be someone else working late in the museum offices, and systematically swept all the floors. No one. The office section of the museum has a central courtyard, so if you look out of one of the inner windows, you can see all the offices in the building. Not a single light was on, which did not raise our hopes of finding someone to let us out, and also kind of creeped us out. Having established that there were no remaining scientists, we thought we could find a security guard at the entrance to the gate. So we went down by the gate and entered the security office, but no one was there. There was a list of museum phone numbers on the wall, though, so we got the idea to call security, wherever they were. But there was no number for them: we were in the security office, so of course they wouldn’t have their own number because they would know it! Then, I remembered that I had printed out contact information for all the people I would be working with on my trip, and thought that it might have a cell number for the department head here. Sure enough, it did. We tried the phone in the security office, but unfortunately it seemed that like all the other museum phones it required some prefix before you could dial out, a prefix that we sadly did not know. Luckily, one of the students had a cell phone on him, and I made the call. I got a “Hello?” on the other end and got no more than a few words of explanation out before the cell phone died. This was moving into serious horror movie territory here (HODAG!), and as such, we did the stupid horror movie protagonists thing and decided to split up. One of us would stay at the security office in case either security or the department head came back, and the other two would enter the public, display section of the museum. If a security guard would be anywhere, it would be there. I ended up heading over to the displays. I routinely wander around in darkness at the Field without much worry, but I will admit to being in a bit of unease when we started blundering into pitch black exhibit halls here (it was also about now when we realized exactly how much we had been emulating stupid horror movie protagonists.) There were a number of thrills and spills along the way (Do you have any idea how frightening it is to walk into a dead end hall and in the tiny fraction of twilight available realize that you have walked into a giant squid? Especially because in the seconds in which this occurs, you don’t realize that you’ve walked into a giant squid model, but rather, that you are surrounded by some creepy thing that just happens to be one of the most primally unsettling forms known to man.) Eventually, though, we found a lit hallway, and passing various eerie tribal masks and whale skeletons, we made it to the front desk. Which, as you have probably guessed, was empty. We sat right down at the main security station right there, watching the entire museum on closed circuit TV. Not a soul to be seen. Furthermore, we recognized several of the rooms that we had walked through. As such, if there was a security guard monitoring things anywhere in the building, they must have seen us. The fact that there was no response to our highly suspicious nighttime meanderings through closed halls cemented our belief that we were, indeed, the only people left in the museum and, as such, completely trapped. Not giving up, we looked around for any avenue of escape, and then noted that between the automatic door leading into the main area of the museum and the massive (securely locked and bolted) front door, there was a pay phone. Fully having accepted our cinematic situation at this point but trying to extricate ourselves from its accompanying character foibles, we decided that one of us should stay back while the other goes through the automatic door, because given our luck, it would probably lock behind us, trapping us in an even more hellish limbo. But not so: it was functional both ways. So the two of us went to the pay phone, pulled out a calling card, dialed the department head’s cell again, and got a busy signal. We laughed for a good ten minutes, called again, and still got the busy signal. We tried one more time before realizing that we had run over the thirteenth son of a gypsy werewolf last Halloween and we were clearly going to be punished for all time. I mean, before heading back to the new display that we had tried in the first place, miraculously finding one dude who was indeed working late and must have just stepped out for a moment when we were there before, reuniting with the third (decidedly non-murdered) member of our party, and being let out to go about our merry way. So I guess the moral here is that if you’re looking to pull a museum heist, or Phantom-like, simply haunt the halls by night, South Africa is the place to do it.
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