Whose side are you on? Predator or Prey?

Have you ever watched National Geographic and found yourself supporting both the lion and the antelope?

There is a lion chasing an antelope across the savannah. You want the antelope to escape. It is such a beautiful, helpless animal, running for its life but then you look at the lion, she doesnt eat grass and has hungry cubs waiting for her to bring something home. She needs to eat and her cubs need to survive.

So who do you support, the lion or the antelope? There is a meme I once saw of a cheetah chasing a gazelle. The cheetah is praying, "Give us this day our daily bread." Meanwhile, the gazelle is praying to the very same God, "Deliver us from evil."

Imagine being God. Both prayers are perfectly reasonable and both animals are hungry for life, although in very different ways. One is asking for lunch, while the other is asking not to become lunch. Whose prayer do you answer?

Anyway, I found myself in a similar situation at home the other day. My cat, Kaitlin, caught a bird and brought it into the house. It was a lovely little blue and grey bird with a red patch on its face. I couldn't help but admire it. Unfortunately, Kaitlin was admiring it for different reasons.

Now, I am fond of my cat. I feed her, look after her, and generally make sure she has a comfortable life. But I also love birds, and there was this poor little bird, flapping desperately, trying to escape from the jaws of Kaitlin.What was I supposed to do? Kaitlin is a cat and cats hunt because it is in their nature. I cannot expect her to abandon millions of years of evolution simply because I have developed feelings for a bird. But Kaitlin, surely! I feed you every day. You have food in your bowl, and have never had to chase anything for your next meal. Is this really necessary?

The bird, maybe had chicks somewhere waiting for it. When it was caught, it had come out to look for worms and had no idea it was about to become somebody else's meal. I wanted to rescue it, but then I felt I was interfering with nature. After all, this is the food chain. Cats eat birds, birds eat worms, worms... well, I am not sure what worms eat, but somebody is always eating somebody somewhere. That is how nature works.

We people like to think we are above all this because we are supposedly at the top of the food chain. Although, if you think about it, there are plenty of situations where we are also somebody else's lunch... those predators that wear suits, have large tumbos, drive tinted mp'enkoni, and the eating is done rather differently. But I digress, back to Kaitlin and the bird.

There I was, standing in the house contemplating. Should I save the bird? Should I let Kaitlin enjoy her hunting success? Was I being cruel to the bird or unfair to the cat? But mostly, why was I making myself responsible for administering justice in the animal kingdom?

I finally decided that I would save the bird, but just as I was about to intervene, the bird freed itself and flew away. And that was that..the bird survived, Kaitlin lost her lunch, which she didn't need anyway and I was spared the difficult business of choosing between two creatures I like.

Nature settled this dispute while I was still busy deciding whose side to take. From where my feet are... 

But how do you hit a billboard?

The other morning, while I was out walking, I witnessed something strange, weird, funny, curious, interesting, etc unfold right in front of my eyes. 

A boda boda was coming down the road, riding on the right-hand side, which of course is the wrong side of the road, but that is normal here in Uganda. He was riding along normally until, for reasons I still cannot explain, he rode straight into a billboard. Yes! He hit it, fell off the motorcycle and landed on the ground.

His motorcycle, however, did not fall with him. It continued on its own. For a few quick seconds, there was a motocycle moving down the road without a rider. Unfortunately, there was a woman ahead, and the motorcycle continued towards her, hit her and she fell down too.

Within the space of a few seconds, the boda rider was on the ground in one place, the woman was on the ground further ahead, the motorcycle had completed an accident without its rider.

Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured. After establishing that everyone was okay, I continued my walk replaying the whole thing in my head, because tell me, what exactly had I just witnessed?! More importantly, who was at fault here?

At first, the obvious answer seems to be the boda man. After all, he was riding on the wrong side of the road, except that had nothing to do with the accident. He could have been riding on the correct side, and he would still have ridden straight into that billboard. I have walked into a glass door before, so I don't want to judge anybody too quickly, but glass doors are understandable. They are transparent, which makes them trick you. A billboard, on the other hand, has one job: to be seen. That is literally why it exists.

So then we need to talk about the billboard. Why was it that low? Surely a billboard should be high enough that people and motorcycles can comfortably pass underneath it. If you erect one at a height where it can remove a man from his motorcycle, surely you must accept some responsibility for what follows, no? But then again, the billboard was not moving. It's the boda man who was.

This now brings me back to the biggest question of all... how  do you ride straight into a billboard? What was happening in his head? Was he thinking about money? Breakfast? Rent? Love? Life? Had somebody annoyed him that morning? I mean you have to be very far away in your thoughts to ram into a billboard.

And bambi the poor woman. How do you explain that you were knocked down by a boda boda that, technically speaking, had no rider?

If she decides to sue, whom does she sue? The boda man? Technically, the man did not knock her. By the time the motorcycle reached her, he was no longer on it. He was off it, on the ground, most likely also wondering where his boda was going. Does she sue the owner of the billboard? Does the boda man sue the billboard owner first, and then the woman sues the boda man? Does the billboard owner then argue that hundreds of people have passed underneath or around the billboard without riding into it? What about the motorcycle itself? If we are being completely factual, that is the thing that actually knocked the woman.

There are quite a number of parties in this matter. The boda man has a case against the billboard. The woman has a case against the boda man. The billboard has a fairly strong defence that it was stationary throughout the entire incident. The motorcycle is the only one that actually hit the woman, yet it had no rider at the time.

I don't know! How would you judge this one?