Remembering Melvyn

In 1967 Melvyn was part of the Smithsonian Institution’s research team in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) studying the ecology of the Asiatic elephant. In that year Dr. C. W. Gray conducted a series of experiments testing the tranquiliser Etorphine (M99) on Elephants in the Galoya region.

Six attempts were made to immobilise lone male elephants in the jungles surrounding the huge dam named The Senanayake Samudra. At the time, this was the newest National Park in Ceylon. Melvyn was instructed in the use of a dart gun and fired it in all 6 experiments of which the last two were successful. He was supported by Wildlife Department Game Ranger, Bevis Ekanayake who was armed with a high powered rifle in case of an attack from a targeted animal.

The first four darted animals were not fully tranquilised and follow-up observation of the animals had to be abandoned as it was either too dangerous or the prevailing conditions made it impossible to do so. The dose of the tranquiliser was gradually increased at each experiment until the fifth and sixth animals to be darted  were shot with doses of between 7 and 8 mgs of M99.

These experiments were the first to be undertaken on the Asiatic elephant and it was found that to immobilise an adult bull took around twice the dosage of M99 required to down an African animal based on comparative body weight!

 

Had he not been called Home six years ago, Mel would be celebrating his 70th birthday today!  May God rest his soul…                                    

 

The Fountain of Age

  Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. – Mark Twain           

            It’s Father’s Day today and I received this email yesterday from Daphne with whom I shared 8 years of my life.                                     

                          

            Received: Saturday, 3 September, 2011, 10:54 PM

You may have seen this before, worth another look !!

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Subject: FW: Crabby Old Man - Brilliant!

This poem is particularly touching as we witness our own lives moving fast.....

When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in  GRASS VALLEY, CA. it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.
Later, when the nurses were going through his meagre possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Missouri. 
The old man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the St. Louis Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.
And this little old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this 'anonymous' poem winging across the Internet.

Crabby Old Man…
What do you see nurses? . . .. . . What do you see?
What are you thinking . . . . . when you're looking at me? A crabby old man .. . . . . not very wise,                         Uncertain of habit . . . . . with faraway eyes?

Who dribbles his food . . . . . and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . . . . . 'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice .. . . . . the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . A sock or shoe?

Who, resisting or not . . . . . lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . . . The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking? . . . . . Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse . . . . . you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am. . . . . . As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, .. . . . . as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten . . . . .. with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters . . . . . who love one another.

A young boy of Sixteen . . . . with wings on his feet.
Dreaming that soon now . . . . . a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . .. . . . my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows . .. . . . that I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now . . .. . . I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . . . . With ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons . . .. .. . have grown and are gone,
But my woman's beside me . . . . .. to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, . . . . . babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children .. . . . . My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me . . . . . my wife is now dead.
I look at the future . . . . . shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing . . . . . young of their own.
And I think of the years .. . . . . and the love that I've known.

I'm now an old man . . . . .. and nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age . . . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles . . . . . grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone . . . . where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass . . . . . a young guy still dwells,
And now and again . . . . . my battered heart swells.
I remember the joys . . . . . I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living . . . . . life over again.

I think of the years, all too few . . . . .. gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people . . . . . open and see.
Not a crabby old man . . . . Look closer . .. . see ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within.
We will all, one day, be there, too!
PLEASE SHARE THIS POEM
The best and most beautiful things of this world can't be seen or touched. They must be felt by the heart

Gluttony and the Gospel

Over the years I've looked at a few print versions of the Last Supper - some of them bloody awful - and I even have a 3D framed version. But I never thought any of these and a number of  others that exist all over the world could, when subjected to careful examination, reveal anything about how our eating habits have changed over a period  of a thousand years resulting in the widespread problem of obesity we're having to contend with now - not until I read the following article in the June 2010 issue of the  Reader's Digest:

            Supersizing the Last Supper

Has the expansion of meal sizes reached biblical proportions?

     It's the most widely depicted dinner of all time and now it's the subject of a study by two US academics.Their objective? To discover whether the portion sizes is a recent phenomenon, or part of an older trend. The pair took 52 different versions of the Last Supper painted from 1000 AD to today and analysed the size of the food compared to average head size in the portraits.

     According to the duo, eating expert Professor Brian Wansink, and his brother Craig, a professor of religious studies, portions have grown significantly over the past millennium. Overall, they found that the size of the main dish had increase by 69.2% plate size by 65.6% and bread size by 23.1%.

     "The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," says Brian Wansink. We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner." Food for thought indeed.

Snakes alive!

       In a recent issue of the CNN Traveller magazine I read an article about the Yala National Park in Sri Lanka  which contained little - if any - information of interest  for me who  worked on a wildlife research project in the Park. However, there is perhaps just this bit that I took special note of about the 2004 tsunami: The author, a tourist, says of his visit to the park, "On the beach that day, my driver recalls seeing buffalo and leopards sprinting away from the sea some 20 minutes before the waves hit. ‘I thought it was an LTTE helicopter attack at first,’ he says. ‘Then I thought the world was ending.’ "  Apparently. it was for 16 of his colleagues and 31 tourists! But from reports I've read there was hardly any loss of wildlife in the Park resulting from this mighty natural disaster.

        There is no doubt in  my mind that animals have the gift of a sixth sense that warns them of grave danger. This, I believe, is to compensate animals for the lack of the  intelligence that we humans are endowed with - a level of which has given us the ability to develop  strategies that have ensured our survival  in the harshest and most unforgiving environments on earth! To me, this a perfect example of "Intelligent Design"!

       I'm reminded of the time when I kept four snakes in a spare bedside locker which was in an empty billet at the R.Cy.A.F. Camp in Diyatalawa.They were all non venomous and only my closest buddies knew this or so I thought! But word had got around!

        One day our Officer Commanding, a RAF Squadron Leader, walked up to me in one of the Combat Training Areas and said, "Corporal Lockhart, while they were digging the foundations for my new quarters, workmen found two vipers. I didn't know  these snakes  were inside our perimeter fence. My wife is mortally scared of all snakes and does not feel safe in the camp. All snakes in this camp must die, Corporal - you understand - they must die!"  I gave him my smartest salute and said "Yes Sir!"

        I knew that somebody had spilled the beans to the CO about my pets in the spare locker because why else would he pick me, above all people, to talk to about snakes and in that tone when he could have got the whole camp to turn out and  tell them the same thing?

      That evening I took my snakes, one by one,  to the swamp outside the perimeter fence at the foot of  what came to be known as Lone Tree Hill and set them free.

      I suspected that it was our Warrant Officer who had  had a whisper in the CO's ear about  the one person in the camp who kept snakes as pets. This WO  had a friendly, free-and-easy sort of disposition that seemed to me to be a bit of a put-on; the sort of person that could easily win the confidence of naive junior non-commissioned officers in order to  find out a lot of stuff that was not generally known to senior noncoms.  

      It wasn't long before I found I was right in assuming that it was our good WO who was  the tale-bearer because, later in the day, he gave himself away:  It was a Friday, when he came up to me and said, 'We're going to have a 'snake drive' tomorrow. We'll get all the recruits to dig up all the anthills in the camp and smoke the snakes out of them. The men will be split up into groups and you can be the leader of one of them."  I had to stifle a chuckle as I asked,, "Did you say a 'snake drive', sir?" And when he nodded I said, "Sir, if it is a job for volunteers from the instructional staff, I don't want to be a part of it."  He said, "Of course it is for volunteers. But why don't you want to get involved?"

      I'm sure my answer gave him a bit of a jolt, "Sir, all animals have a premonition of any concerted effort to wipe out their species and will retreat to safety so I'm afraid the "snake drive" will be a complete failure. I’m pretty sure not one snake will be found. They would have all disappeared by tomorrow."

      All the WO could say was, "Bullshit - all bullshit!"

     The next day, Saturday, I went out and spent most of the day with relatives from Colombo who were holidaying in Haputale and from there to a card game and dinner at the home of a Burgher family in Diyatalawa. On returning to camp, I learned  that no one on the   'snake drive' saw a snake, let alone get to kill one!