Читать книгу How to Attract the Wombat - Will Cuppy - Страница 18

THE YAK

Yaks are supposed to be funny. Some people almost die laughing at the mere thought of a Yak. I feel slightly depressed when I think of a Yak. About one Yak in ten strikes me as funny and he could be funnier. The Yak is a species of Ox¹ indigenous to Tibet and adjacent regions of Central Asia. He has a long, heavy fringe on his sides to show that he is a Yak. This trimming is quaint and old-fashioned but I wouldn’t call it so fearfully amusing. It may rate a quiet smile but it is not a belly laugh. It catches dust and dirt and miscellaneous debris, of which there is a great deal in Tibet. The Yak should be sent to the cleaner. Tibetans are crazy about Yaks. They cannot see how other countries manage to get along without these useful animals.² Tibetan farmers, or Drokpas, live in yurts or tents made of Yak hair and practice polyandry because there are more men than women in Tibet. When a Drokpa woman has two husbands, one of them tends to the Yak.³ Tibetans drink from thirty to fifty cups of buttered tea every day. This is made of brick tea, parched barley meal, or tsamba, salt, soda, rancid Yak butter, and germs. And they wonder why life seems so futile. Yaks are fine for riding in the Himalayas, if you are not the nervous type. They are apt to throw their loads and they have an odd habit of looking over the edges of cliffs to see what goes on down there. Wild Yaks are really wild. The bulls have hair on their chest a yard long for Yak appeal. They wander around.⁴ Old bulls recline on the hillsides and look at the sunset. Yaks have more brawn than brain. They love the frightful sub-zero weather of the Tibetan plateaus. When traveling as a missionary in Tibet in 1846, Abbé Huc passed a herd of fifty Yaks who had been frozen solid to the last Yak while crossing the Tsangpo River. Only their heads were visible above the surface, but he could see through the ice that their legs had been frozen instantaneously in the various correct swimming positions. I hate to be critical, but we all know how one’s favorite stories tend to improve. I do believe Abbé Huc saw a Yak who was very, very cold.

1 Or Cow, as the case may be.

2 They don’t.

3 Old Tibetan maxim: Home is where the Yak is.

4 Wild Yaks charge at high speed and it’s no use saying “Nice Yakky! Nice Yakky!” They do not understand English.