We--Me, Sunni, Sunni's mother and father--were at the buss-stop at 2 that afternoon; going to visit some of Sunni's relatives at their ostrich-farm.
I had never really seen an ostrich before--except from in a zoo--and didn't quite know what to expect either. In cartoons ostriches are stupid animals who stick their head in the sand when threatened and in those boring junk-mail I keep getting full of useless trivia it says that an ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain, while on discovery channel they keep comparing them to dinosaurs. After seeing them I don't for a second doubt the bit about brain-size; I'm not saying they were extremely stupid, I'm saying they had huge eyes. Well--they did seem rather stupid too.
There were just three of them, one male named Arthur and two females named Daisy and Dolly, and not once did they stick their head in the sand. They ate grass though, a lot of it. I suspect they would have eaten anything you gave to them--worse than goats.
They were bigger than I'd expected too; a good seven feet and they bent their necks as if it was entirely boneless.
After we had finally grown bored with watching big dumb birds, Sunni and I had a lengthy conversation with one of her younger cousins--a fourteen-year-old named Joe--about South Park, Disney-movies, computer-games and seawater. After a rather long time he convinced us to go swimming in the fjord.
Salt water--well--I don't like it. It wreaks havoc with my hair and it makes my eyes burn. Inside the fjords it is however quite a bit warmer than in the water in the dam.
Although it was both windy and cloudy on that day, we just couldn't pass up the opportunity to impress a fourteen-year-old boy, could we?
It was quite fun when I got used to the fact that the water was salt and that I couldn't swallow it. The seaweed was a bit of a nuisance, but once we swam away from the pier that wasn't a problem anymore. Sunni had fun playing giant-squid and pulling me under, but I'm used to that. It all ended in a massive seaweed-war. Sunni started it--I swear--I was just swimming along minding my own business, when she suddenly started throwing big heaps of seaweed at me. All right; I threw it back. And the so the story goes. By the time we made a truce I think we'd scared the life out of Sunni's cousins, but we had fun, so it doesn't really matter.
The water was not--as I have mentioned earlier--cold, the air however was. Getting out of the water was so cold I was tempted to throw myself back in and stay; grow gills and a tale and swim around ship-wrecks seducing sailors--or something. I didn't tough. Shivering and soaking wet we walked back up to the house. We had to queue for the bathroom, too. When we at last had got ourselves into some warm clothes I was sneezing and my fingers were so numb I could hardly move them.
Wrapped in warm blankets we had another interesting talk with Sunni's cousin, this time about the quality of the movie G.I. Jane while we at the same time tried to watch the news.
I was longing for a cup of hot tea.
Introduction