Saturday, 18 January 2014

ERNEST HEMINGWAY - Writer & Shooter:

Reading the other  night to 'wind-down' after a busy day ('Green Hills Of Africa' by Hemingway) on my Kindle - his writing realy got my attention - I wish that I could get anywhere as good at painting word pictures. In this bit below he talks about his native bearer M'Colas African sense of humour:

  "Highly humerous was the hyena obscenely loping, full belly dragging, at daylight on the plain, who, shot from the stern skittered on into speed to tumble end over end. Mirth provoking was the hyena that stopped out of range by an alkali lake to look back and, hit in the chest, went over on his back, his four feet and his full belly in the air. Nothing could be more jolly than the hyena coming suddenly wedge-headed and stinking out of high grass by a donga, hit at ten yards, who raced his tail in three narrowing, scampering circles until he died."
                                        Hemingway and his wife Mary on Safari 1953 -54

  "It was funny to M'Cola to see a hyena shot at close range. There was that comic slap of the bullet and the hyenas agitated suprise to find death inside of him. It was funnier to see a hyena shot at a great distance, in the heat shimmer of the plain, to see him go over backwards, to see him start that frantic circle, to see that electric speed that he was racing the little nickeled death inside him. But the great joke of all, the thing that M'Cola waved his hands across his face about, and turned away and shook his head and laughed, ashamed even of the hyena, the pinnacle of hyenic humour, was the hyena, the classic hyena, that hit too far back while running, would circle madly, snapping and tearing at himself until he pulled his own intestines out, and then stood there, jerking them out and eating them with relish."

  "Fisi" M'Cola would say and shake his head in delighted sorrow at there being such an awful beast.."
                                          HYENA GANG VERSUS LION PRIDE

- I feel the same way at the antics of some of our Politicians - anyone else see the likeness?


Classic Mauser Action .375" H&H Magnum - Good all-round African Hunting Rifle.


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