Mystery Giraffe
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Mystery Giraffe
Today’s special animal friend is the okapi, Okapia johnstoni. This member of the giraffe family is also known as the forest giraffe or zebra giraffe. They are native to sub-Saharan Africa and are rated Endangered by IUCN. Okapis are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is not the best place for large animal conservation, but it does have the Okapi Wildlife Refuge in the Ituri Forest.
The Ituri Forest is also home to Mbuti pygmies. Videos about the Mbuti people describe them as “hobbits” or “living like elves in the forest,” which is gobsmackingly patronizing and Eurocentric. Like the surviving hunter-gatherers of Borneo, they have incredible survival skills and knowledge of their native environment, and they are exactly as human as CSLF readers are, not subhuman or superhuman or other-than-human.
Back to okapis. In spite of the stripes on their legs and hindquarters, they are no more like zebras than any other large, herbivorous quadruped is. Their base color is a deep brown with purple tones, and the stripes are horizontal. Their fur is short and very dense; zookeeper sources say it feels like velvet. It is oily to shed rain. Like giraffes, they have long, mobile ears and a long, thick, muscly tongue for grasping tough, prickly vegetation.
Okapis are about five feet high. Females weigh 495 to 770 lbs., while males weigh 440 to 660 lbs. Although they share important features with giraffes, they are short! This is an adaptation to the dense forest of their habitat. They can move nimbly around the roots and stumps of the forest, and there is plenty of vegetation within easy reach.
It is estimated that there are about 35,000 okapis in the wild. They were not described by European scientists until 1900, and it is difficult to observe them even in the Wildlife Refuge where you’re supposed to find them. They don’t move around much, traveling maybe half a mile a day along forest paths. Each adult eats 40 to 65 lbs. of leaves, branches, and fruit per day.
They are solitary except when a female has a calf. They are also usually quiet, communicating mainly by smell. They have glands on their feet that leave a sticky trail where they walk, and males mark territories with urine. Females make a barking sound when they are ready to mate. Gestation is 14 to 16 months, and one calf is born. The baby can stand within 30 minutes of birth.
Like deer, mother okapis hide their newborn babies in the foliage and visit them at intervals for nursing during the first week or two. Baby okapis are able to eat leaves within three weeks of birth. It is suggested that one reason for the stripes on okapis’ rumps is that a calf can see its mother’s white stripes in poor light. The San Diego Zoo has discovered that mothers and babies communicate using infrasonic (very low pitched) sounds which are inaudible to predators.
Okapis are successfully kept and bred in many zoos. Threats to the wild population include habitat loss and degradation, hunting for “bushmeat,” armed conflict, and predation by leopards.
I'm working on the Hispanic Ministry budget. The easy part was meeting with Lourdes and Lola, deciding what events we expected to have from July 2025 to June 2026, and making a guess of what those would cost. We've asked for the same amounts from 2021-2 to 2024-5, and we kicked it up a bit because of inflation since 2021. And I made a clever little Excel spreadsheet.
The occasion of mortal sin, don't let me near any sharp implements part is dealing with the Finance Council. They sent Lourdes a Google spreadsheet that was formatted differently from my Excel one. Okay, no problem, just re-enter ... but no. It has questions. It has categories.
"Call the Business Manager if you have any questions," say the instructions. So I did. "What does this question, 'Reimbursement: Yes/No' mean?"
"I don't know. Nobody else has asked that."
"If we want to get new costumes and treasure boxes for the Three Kings at Epiphany, is that 'Capital' or 'Event'?"
"I don't know."
"Suppose we reasonably expect that we're going to need some stuff for an event, but we don't know, a year in advance, whether we'll need color copies, plates, or the rental of a propane heater. Do we ask for 'Administrative' funds, 'Event' funds, or what?"
"I don't know."
Then, you don't just turn in the Google spreadsheet, once you've figured it out. There's a form on a system called Alchemer, where you have to, again, refit all your information into a different shape, as well as explain how your stuff fits into vaguely worded "mission" and "vision" categories. I just wrote a three-page essay, because I'm an A student, but I'll bet it won't fit in the Alchemer form when I try to copy it from Word, and then I'll call the Business Manager again, and she'll say, "I don't know," again, and then maybe ... knives ... stop me ...
And, "Are you holding fundraisers?" is on there, even though FOR SEVEN YEARS, I've been writing, "We are not allowed to have ministry fundraisers, as far as I know. Is there a ministry fundraising policy?" with no response, just the question every year. The "new and improved" Finance Council has been working on this for 9 months and counting, but you'd think, from the form, that it was all squared away.
We're asking for $3,075 for the whole year, for a congregation of over 1,000 people (and growing). If they give me any crap, I think I'll say, "Forget it," pay for everything myself, and stop contributing to the parish. Life's too long to live like this.
Good morning, everyone. It's dark here. Happy Trash Day!