Inside Billie

Inside Billie
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

After several months, Plotnik and Ducknik have finally sorted out all their digital photos from South Africa, and after looking at them all a few more times, this one is maybe Plot's favorite.

The shot is taken inside Billie, the name of the big Mercedes bus the group traveled in for a week to view Kruger Game Park, Johannesburg and Soweto. Everyone is smiling and laughing, which was the way it went, mostly.

Professor Noble is in the back, along with two new friends who will be coming up to Saint Plotniko this coming weekend to watch their college football team, No. 1 in the country, annihilate the poor, toothless Golden Bears. Normally, Trojans are afraid of Bears, but not at this moment.

Plotnik and Ducknik and The Great PunkyDunky and The Great FiveHead are also in the photo, along with many of PD's fellow journalism students, and a few parents like Rhonda, in the front in the blue, who basically emptied all the gift shops in Mpumalanga and transfered what they had to her living room in Houston.

The Great Plotnik cannot remember if this shot was taken before or after seeing the lion eat the zebra, or spotting the two black rhinos, or the hippos sleeping next to the crocodiles, or the elephant and giraffe and zebra families, or the herds of water bucks and impalas, or all the birds, or that leopard sitting stone still in the grass?

Plotnik and Ducknik wish all his readers may some day get to see wild animals in their native habitats. It'll be a thousand times more interesting than watching huge Trojans devour helpless little Bears.