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Meerkats Join the Big 4
Posted March 21st, 2008 by rybolov
It’s been a little while since I did anything offbeat (OK, some of you could claim “absolutely bat-sh*t crazy”), so here goes. Riding the success of my earlier Meerkats and Risk Management post, we’re now following our young, dashing meerkat protagonist off to his new tribe in the Big 4. Let’s have a look at his diary, shall we?
17 March 2008: Dear diary, life has been different since I left my clan of the widget-makers-and-maintainers. Here in my new clan, we have a different subset of meerkats: the bugcounters. They’re the strangest sort of meerkats you could imagine. Instead of eating the bugs that we find out while foraging, they insist that we bring them all back so that they can count them. They put them into a pile, count the bugs, and then, check this out, they ask a rival clan to come count them again just in case they didn’t count them correctly the first time.
18 March 2008: Dear diary, I read in the Kalahari Times that one clan of bugcounters actually ate another. I think this is completely misunderstood, but when my clan traveled to the second clan’s foraging territory, all that we could hear was the sound of “Om Nom Nom” and couldn’t bear to see the outcome. I think it had something to do with this website and risk management.
19 March 2008: Dear diary, how we ended up with so many young, happy meerkats in my clan is beyond me, but I suspect the alpha male and female taking a cruise to the bahamas three months ago had something to do with it. At any rate, we’re inundated with young meerkats. In some ways, our burrow is like the meerkat nursery, and every senior meerkat is a babysitter at one point or another, in addition to a sentry, forager, and burrow-digger.
20 March 2008: Dear diary, my burrow has a new type of automatic bug-preparation machine. You need no less than a doctorate in meerkat physics to make the thing turn the bug extract powder into edible bug substitute. the first time I used it, I spilled bug extract all over the floor, my paws, and one of my clan members. I miss my old bug-boiling pot.
21 March 2008: Dear diary, in my clan, we have a new way of measuring the success of meerkat foraging. Instead of the total number of bugs we collect, now in our annual meerkat assessment report we talk about the total number of hours spent foraging versus the total number of hours doing meerkat development courses and filling out our bug reimbursement forms.
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1 Comment »
March 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Google reports that a Meerkat Risk Management Company does exist. http://www.mkrm.co.uk/
It is for meerkats struggling to get back into the burrows post incident (a head on in a tunnel with a Rinkhals is a bitch!)
On conclusion of the course meerkats will be able to:
– reduce maintenance costs by correctly preparing their back hoes on a daily basis.
– reduce insurance and accident claims by identifying and managing “Red Mist” driving (you’ll know all about it when you bump into a reversing meerkat after he has encountered a Rinkhals.)
– identify and avoid potential hazards (i.e. tunnel collapse) through the application of advanced tunneling techniques.
– reduce running costs through the application of ecologically sound tunneling techniques (the marketing guys wanted something about green and this is it!)
– maintain an effective Management of Occupational Road Risk strategy and audit trail (or how to make certain the bug counters stay employed!)
Keep an eye on your local burrow news for a course coming to your part of the Kalahari!