Well today the wildlife had taken care of the zebra, or at least most of it. I hadn’t gone to see it for the past couple of days but the GF tells me that on day 2 it looked much the same but had clouds of flies around it while on day 3 it had a hole in its belly with entrails pulled out but was otherwise much the same.
Today, I had on a whim signed up for a talk on worklife wellbeing, thinking it’s not the sort I will ever ever have to attend as a self-employed type, so might as well attend one when there’s an organisation offering it to me. The speaker started off with data on how worker wellbeing is good for their employers, recommended daily walks, setting up a gym in the basement and eating with colleagues. When they started talking about the importance of sleep I got furious that they were probably paid a month of my usual income for this, and stomped out, to be met by a smell of death that was like walking into a wall.
The GF was just looping back from his own walk, so I persevered through the smell of death and met him upwind. The zebra seemed to be gone, but then there it was, pulled into some bushes, a blackened torso, mostly empty, the odd limb missing, all in all in pretty terrible state. So I suppoes the sounds we’d heard, of a sort of yowling, must have been hyenas. They’d been preceded by shrieking birds, perhaps vultures or similar that had started the job.
In any case it wasn’t a pretty sight, nor was it that nice to go a little further and find a gnawed limb, and an unidentifiable organ. But circle of life etc. Suddenly the dog appeared and was absolutely overjoyed to see me, as I’d not accompanied it on a walk for the last couple of days. She ran around me in circles a few times, leapt up until I petted her, and was generally very sweet. Then of course I had to go for a walk. The GF pointed out that there may be a breakout room or something, but I couldn’t bear to go participate in one, and thought it was unlikely I was the only one who’d disappeard. So we walked to the edge of the airstrip and then back, where the wellbeing consultant was still talking, this time about someone who arranged a personal trainer for their entire team out of pocket. It was close enough to an hour that I left the call.
I had thought it was a shame that the zebra hadn’t died even closer to our house so maybe we’d have seen the hyenas, but on reflection and with the memory of that smell still strong, perhaps it’s just as well.