I wrote another line:Subject A: Middle management. Subject B: The intern "looking busy." Productivity: Negligible.
Nick exhaled through his nose.
“You’re not going to win this.”
I underlined the last word. “This isn’t a contest.”
“You brought a notebook on a safari.”
“Preparation.”
He drove forward another twenty yards and stopped again.
The giraffes watched us for a moment, their dark eyes steady and unreadable, then returned to the business of dismantling the tree.
I studied the angle of their necks.
“Is the neck used for dominance displays?”
“They fight sometimes.”
“With the neck.”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
Nick glanced at the notebook again.
“Leave it.”
“No.”
We moved on.
The track dipped slightly toward a shallow wash where the soil darkened into a compacted strip of clay. Nick guided the jeep carefully along the edge of the bank before easing it back onto the scrubby track.
Something small rolled across the path ahead.
Nick stopped again.
A dark sphere moved slowly through the dust, pushed by a creature the size of a walnut.
I leaned forward, my nose wrinkling at the physics of it.
Aggressive commitment for a ball of mystery.
“That,” Nick said, “is a dung beetle.”
The beetle braced its back legs against the ground and shoved the ball forward with surprising determination.
I watched it for several seconds.
“Is it transporting waste?”
“Yes.”
“For consumption?”
