Peter Allison · 246 pages
Rating: (6.9K votes)
“Like every other guide or wildlife lover who is eventually eaten or trampled, I felt that I had a bond with this herd that would make me safe with them. I wanted to try my luck again.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“She asked another question: "What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?"
This would normally have riled me... but I had come to think of her as Dr. Spock from Star Trek - an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply.
"... to be honest, it doesn't matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think 'What a pity' and leave it at that while only a few wept”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“Bleary-eyed one morning, with caffeine still missing from my system, I fumbled my way along the dusty path to the guest tents, calling out ‘Good morning!’ in as cheery a voice as the hour would allow (it was barely after five o’clock, and the sun had only just cracked the horizon). I heard a rhythmic thumping, getting rapidly louder, and I turned to find 1,600 pounds of pissed-off cow bearing down on me. Clearly it disagreed with my assessment of the morning.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“This tree, though, had not been fed on, so it was apparent that the culprit was a bull (elephant) who was filled with testosterone but no outlet for it, so he pushed over trees. It's a great release for a bull and a way of showing his strength after a female has rejected him. If human males had the same ability, global deforestation would be complete by now.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“It was the most ludicrous sound I had ever heard. The strangled gargling sounded like a goat that was having an unpleasant sexual encounter.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“Peter Allison is a safari guide who has spent much of the last twelve years leading wildlife-viewing and ecotourism trips in Africa, mostly Botswana. His love of animals led him to train as a safari guide in the early 1990s and soon thereafter he was hired by southern Africa’s largest operator to train all of their safari experts. Safaris he has led have been featured in magazines such as Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler. He has assisted National Geographic photographers and appeared on television shows such as Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. Peter is also active with the Athena Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group. He is on the board of the Athena Foundation’s youth program, whose mission is to inspire young people to develop their interest in conservation. Originally born and raised in Sydney, Australia, he currently divides his time between Australia, California, and Botswana.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
Peter Allison
Born place: Australia
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“For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own.
This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.”
― Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, quote from The Leopard
“With Alicia and the Alchemists on the loose, Sydney couldn’t leave a secure location like this without good reason. She contented herself by holing up in a guest room and prepping some spells that would be of use in the search for Alicia tomorrow. That left Dimitri and me to babysit, which seemed like the setup for some sort of wacky sitcom.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from The Ruby Circle
“I've confromted enough assholes in my time. They never realize they're assholes. Not once. Whatever you say.”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from Finding Audrey
“What sort of funny songs?"
"My balls are swearing my balls are swearing I can't keep my balls from sweating ohhh no."
"How is that funny?" I asked.
"As in the balls of your feet?"
"No, it's like this thing..... Never mind," he said.”
― Anna Carey, quote from Eve
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from The Painted Veil
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