Article for 2013 Apr 08

Boulder Bay on the east coast of Cape Peninsula is notable for its colony of African penguins (Spheniscus demersus), of which there are many. They are penguins, and therefore predictably total cute. We spent about an hour there, and I bought a souvenir jumper.

The Cape of Good Hope is famous for being the southernmost tip of Africa, or the southwesternmost tip of Africa to those who have their facts correct (Cape Agulhas is 150 km east-by-south-east). Less well-known is 2.2 km east of the Cape of Good Hope, which is Cape Point, the tip of Cape Peninsula but not the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean (that’s Cape Agulhas again).

And less well-known again are the rock hyraxes (Procavia procensis) that inhabit Cape Point. These are not giant rodents, but distant relatives of elephants and sea cows, which are not cows but... you get the idea. Manatees and dugongs.

My sisters found these hyraxes very cute; in my usual aversion to fur I preferred to take photos of lizards on the cliff-faces and guinea-fowl beside the light-house. I regarded the mammals as more useful when placed on a Scrabble board (the minimum score you’d get from playing HYRAXES being 71 if you get all your tiles out).

Talking of getting all tiles out, now would be a good point to add that Mum got all her tiles out twice in today’s game. In Round 1 she played BARITONE for 62 points, and in Round 2 she played [D]EANERY/TIE[D] for 72. At game’s end she had nearly three times as many points as Dad had, and 0.9 times as many points as I. For I had got all seven of my my own tiles out twice too. Mum’s DEANERY provided an A for me to play NEGATION (62), and the TIE that Mum had past-tensed in playing DEANERY/TIED provided a base for me to play FASTENS/STIED (74) - to sty a pig is to put it in its pen.

Shortly afterwards I played the short word IO (4 points), getting all my one remaining tile out and ending the game with me on 277, Mum on 249, and Dad on 85.

An io is a moth (Automeris io), named after one of Zeus’ lovers in Greek mythology, whom he made into a heifer to hide her from Hera. To keep Io from Zeus, Hera captured her and placed a guard with many eyes upon her; when Zeus got the guard killed, Hera added his eyes to the tail of the peacock. I saw two specimens of Pavo cristatus today, by the side of the road on the west coast of Cape Peninsula.

I doubt there’ll be a day with more animals this holiday. (Particularly as we’re departing tomorrow, by a specimen of Boeingus sevenfourseveni.)