Asakiyume mita

In Aventura en el Amazonas both Mayam and Nashi are learning about the chain of life--Mayam when her mother talks to her about piranhas and other carnivorous fish, and Nashi when he sees a cayman gobble up a roseate spoonbill.

"Some fish feed on others," their mother tells Mayam, who is feeling like it would be good to get rid of some of the more marauding of the the carnivorous fish. "It's like a staircase: if you take away one step, all of it comes crashing down."

And

"Nature knows how to do its thing, even if at first we don't understand" says their father to Nashi.

I didn't see a roseate spoonbill, but I did see a harpy eagle, with its fierce, strange face. (The one I saw looked like the one on the right--photo from the Miami zoo's Harpy Eagle Project)



And I didn't fish for piranhas, but I had some kind of carnivorous fish one meal--and I saw a truly gigantic fish in the market. (It's a bit daunting--it's behind a cut)

( big fish )


Yesterday I took Little Springtime and her fiancée to see my father, and during the drive, I passed a truck with a message on the back of its trailer: "Don't like trucks? Buy less stuff!"

Very strange! The driver feels upset about other drivers, presumably car drivers, not "liking" trucks? But the driver is in a great huge 18-wheeler--why should they fuss about the opinions of car drivers? How can it possibly affect them? (Where are they hearing all this negativity?) I'm pretty neutral on trucks, but my impression is that people who feel negatively about them are mainly expressing nervousness about driving near them--or are complaining about bad driving on the part of the trucks--not, y'know, saying trucks are evil or that trucks should disappear, which is kind of what the driver's message seemed to imply.

"Buy less stuff" is disingenuous when all sorts of necessities travel by truck, but okay, let's say people could truly buy less stuff ... then the driver of the truck might lose their job? So on that level too the message was a head scratcher.