“A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.”
Lana Turner
“A wolf is simply an impatient gentleman.”
Giorgio
A friend of mine, Patti, is a very important psychiatrist in southern Italy, I joke with her, she cannot become my shrink. We know far too much about each other. Anyway, besides being a shrink, Patti is also very keen on the study of animals. She tells me this story about the zebras, which I think is relevant here to the chapter in question, why in some way we are sometimes predators and sometimes prey. In the wild, (George says I mean the veld, but I don’t mean the veld), I mean the wild. In the wild the zebras you think have no cazzo in hell’s chance. There they are with their black and white stripes. You can see them a mile off. How can they survive with all the lions around? Surely he comes to pick them off? – Then one day, Man in the shape of the biologist wants to come and study the zebras. He’s looking at them through his binoculars, but he cannot tell which one is which. Is it Zebra One or Zebra Two he is looking at? So he goes over in his jeep and slaps a bit of paint on the backside of the Zebra he wants to study… Big mistake, not only for the biologist, but also the zebra with the red paint. The lion picks him out and has him for his dinner. You see that is the key to it – the camouflage only works when you are in the pack. Otherwise the lion gets you every time. So now you know.