To Each His Own

One of the women on my visiting teaching list has a house full of animals from Africa, their heads or skins adorning the walls. Two heads on the dining room wall just over a zebra skin hanging on that wall. (Zebras are much larger animals than I ever suspected, by the way.) One head on the wall between dining and living room, one on the end wall of the living room, just over the couch. These are large, very large, trophies of the animals taken down by bow and arrow on the family's last African safari.

Next to the chair where my friend sits when I visit is a whole animal, this one small, standing on sand (fake sand, I'm sure) with scrubby plants here and there--another trophy. It belongs to their younger son, also from the last safari, but he has no place to keep it. I could say something about that but won't.

I do not know the names of the animals, except for the zebra. Most have horns; some have a familiar look but have names I've never heard of. Clearly Africa has many and various animal types. One of the surprises for me has been to feel their skin/fur. It does not look soft, but it is. They are beautiful animals. Their eyes draw my eyes, and I have some kind of regret that they are dead, even though my friend is proud of them, dead and all.

Next year they, the people, are going back to Africa, the whole family this time, which includes the older son, who is in a wheelchair. My friend is excited to go back, as, I'm sure, are the men in the family. No doubt they'll bring home more of Africa's animals for display. I do not know where they'll be displayed. She has spoken of their desire to move. I wonder if there is a connection--perhaps to a bigger house?

I do not mean to sound judgmental, but that may be how this comes across. I like these people. She, my friend, is one of the best people I know, having given unselfish and unceasing care to their wheelchair-bound boy for all of his nearly thirty years. I will simply confess that their way of regarding these animals is different from mine. Just different, that's all.