R.I.P

In a matter of 3 days, we had 2 deaths in the family.

I was sitting in the living room discussing some tedious details with mugithi’s aunt. The sun had made it round the house, by this time I was being blinded by the reflection from the aunt’s nose (the nose having burnt up its ration of talcum powder – a failed attempt to look très digne).
It was at this moment that our internally displaced house help came sobbing uncontrollably, and a death was reported.

I rushed to the cage, and president hamster was indeed lying listless on the tiny swing inside the cage (which swung back and forth in a dreadful silent ballet).

We have 2 hamsters, named after the president and the prime minister, sometime back, just for the dismal pleasure of it, I had made the house-help’s child in charge of feeding the hamsters. The child had diligently taken on the task and fed these mute creatures 10 times a day – and fed them to the point of gluttony and sinful death (the hapless prime minister hamster passed away a day later).

After a solemn ceremony, we buried them together in the garden. May they find a happy place in hamster heaven

Death by killer robot / urine

So a man in australia, using plans downloaded from the internet, built a killer robot, that he then programmed to shot him in the head. A novel way to commit suicide.

In my home town, there was Hugo, the last of a long line of Jewish watch-makers. Hugo was depressed. When you saw him on the street, he walked, stepping only among the shadows, and responded only to his surname.

One day Hugo went on a skiing weekend to Pamporovo (in Bulgaria) and never returned. The ski-lift, of Soviet design, broke a hinge and crashed into a crevasse carrying away Hugo, the last watch-maker’s son into its cold, swirling depths.

Hugo’s mansion was taken over by City Hall (no will, no known relatives). While arranging his meager items for auction, the bailiffs of the council discovered a giant, reeking vat in the cellar. Next to it were a calendar and a letter.

The letter was a suicide note dated well into the future. The calendar had numbers scribbled against each date, and a crude summation formula to estimate when the vat would become full (a watch-maker is always a man of precision).

The mysterious purpose of all this was soon clear. Everyday, Hugo peed into the vat. He intended to pee into the vat until it became full. On that momentous day he intended to dive into the vat, and drown in his own urine.

Thus, a badly assembled hinge made by a Gulag inmate in some desolate corner of the Soviet Union prevented the eventful demise of Hugo. A death, in the end, relegated to just a trivial ski accident.

Why didn’t the BBC call me ?

New born rhino named after Kofi Annan A new-born rhinoceros in Kenya has been named Kofi Annan in honour of the former UN Secretary General. Baby Kofi was born at the weekend in the community-owned Ol Choro Oirogua Conservancy….

Wonder why the BBC didn’t call me. Among my small menagerie of pet animals, I have this eclectic pair of golden hamsters. One is named Raila, and the other Kibaki. They live together in the same cage, are well behaved, and display a bottomless appetite for the tiny morsels I throw at them.

(The only odd note in all this is umm…. they repeatedly  mount each other with reckless abandon. I did not know I had the privilege of owning two gay hamsters – not that its bad)

Note: It struck me that this is a most appropriate post as today is Valentines Day