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Last night we went to an unusual restaurant: Stand Up Kebab, located in South Davis. It’s open only on Friday and Saturday nights, and the rest of the time the owner runs a car-repair garage (attached to the restaurant) as well as a used-car lot.

It’s an unprepossessing place. You order outside and they bring you your food inside.

The long table below had three people who were either tired, drunk, or dead. They may have been workers at the garage, but they eventually returned to life and left.

But the food was good, and here’s what we ate.  Beers first, of course:Persian (Iranian) ones:

We started with an unusual Persian soup called Ash e Reshteh. I discovered the ingredients from Wikipedia:

Ash reshteh or ash-e-reshteh (Persian: آش رشته) is a type of āsh (Iranian thick soup) featuring reshteh (thin noodles) and kashk (a sour dairy product, made from cooked or dried yogurt) commonly made in Iran.

It was absolutely delicious:

This was followed by a typical Iranian meal: kebabs. We had both chicken kebabs and lamb/beef kebabs, served with sauce, pickle, and plenty of rice. I’m not sure why there was a pat of butter on my plate

Lamb and beef kebabs:

And for a postprandial treat, we repaired to a store in downtown Davis that sells boba tea and mochi donuts. We had green-tea donuts; specimen below:

These are photos taken by reader Rosemary, who lives in South Africa near Kruger National Park, and runs an organization (GMFER: Global March for Elephants and Rhinos) that protects the local wildlife by partnering with local communities to raise awareness about trafficking in animals and poaching. GMFER also works to change laws to lessen poaching of elephants and rhinos and, mainly, to end trophy hunting of “iconic” animals.  Finally, they concentrate on educating children and rangers to appreciate local wildlife and the need to protect it, and teaching them to remove snares.

Rosemary has kindly helped me make arrangements for my visit to Kruger and environs in August; these arrangements can be quite complicated.

I’ll be in South Africa (Capetown and the Kruger area) for roughly a month. When I’m not traveling or staying in wildlife camps, I will be putting up in the small town of Hoedspruit near Kruger—in the house of Rosemary’s landlady.  Since the animals roam fairly freely around that area, which is in a fenced wildlife estate, that house is visited daily by common warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus), who come by for handouts of corn.  (Sometimes leopards also appear.)

One of the hogs is a huge and magnificent male whom I’ve named Ozymandias—Ozy for short.  Here he is; isn’t he gorgeous? (Photos by Rosemary).

The “warts” are protuberances formed from cartilage, and are presumably used to protect the animal’s head. They are sexually dimorphic.  The Fresno Chaffee Zoo describes them:

Males have 3 pairs of “warts,” 1 near the eyes, 1 on the snout and 1 pair on the lower jaw. The female’s two pair of warts are smaller, with none on the snout. The eyes are set high on the head. They have a typical pig’s disc-like nose pad.

Warthogs are underrated, and don’t count as one of the “Big Five” animals that tourists come to Africa to see. But they should be, as they are amazing animals.  They have four tusks, which are simply overgrown teeth, and these are used for fighting, excavating their burrows, and digging for roots (warthogs are grazing herbivores).

The lower pair of tusks become razor sharp by rubbing against the upper pair, and, besides digging, are used for fighting, particularly between males.  I would like to pet Ozy when I meet him, but I cannot as there’s a danger of being slashed!

The hogs are poached for their tusks, which are considered analogous to elephant ivory, and are also sometimes hunted as “trophies” (I despise this practice).

Warthogs are fearless animals, and mothers will defend their babies vigorously. Below is a YouTube video showing a family being stalked by wild dogs, but the mother drives them off. Then a single warthog baby gets attacked by lions, and even gets picked up in their mouths, but then recovers, goes to ground, and, despite its tiny size, goes after the lions and drives them off!

Note the speed of the mother, and the fact that warthogs run with their tails held vertically:

And an adult escaping lions, one of their most common predators.

Warthogs can run fast: up to 30 mph (48 kph), and they forage by grazing on their knees, as is in this Wikipedia picture (they drink the same way).

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Here’s Ozy again in all his glory. When he arrives for a snack, all the other warthogs, including smaller males, females, and babies, leave him alone.  With one shake of his head they know they must stay away (photo by Rosemary):

Warthogs like to bathe and wallow in mud to cool themselves. But they also have a unique symbiotic relationship with mongeese. I was stunned when I saw this video of a warthog letting mongeese crawl all over it to remove its ticks. This of course is a symbiotic relationship: the mongeese get a meal and the pig gets cleaned (it’s similar to the cleaner wrasses in the ocean):

Rosemary’s landlady has built a cement pond in her yard for the warthogs to lie in. But a big male like Ozy will drive the other hogs out of the water and mud, so they have to wait for their bath.

Ozy again, photo by Rosemary:

I have made a deal to adopt Ozy. In return for paying a monthly fee to support him as well as other animals in the area, I will ensure that Ozy will get extra food, including vegetables, and I will get photos and a monthly letter from Ozy giving me an update on his doings.

One problem with Ozy is that, according to Rosemary, he is a Republican. He likes Trump because, like Ozy, Trump is a bully. Also, Ozy is keenly aware that there are two sexes, of which he’s one stupendous example, and he doesn’t like the Biden administration’s weakness for the “sex spectrum” argument. Here he is wearing his MAGA hat. But I will help take care of him anyway:

Stay tuned for more on Ozy. He hurt his leg, presumably in a fight with another male, and it is healing, but taking a while to do so.