The Most Dangerous Game

Give me a ping, Vasili.

One ping only, please.

Aye, Captain.

- Capt. Ramius to Capt. Borodin

Face painting at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence egg hunt

Many of you are settling-in for the week-end to celebrate Easter, Passover, Eid-ul-Fidr, or simply spending time with family. So, too, are we. Last week, Grant's brother and sister-in-law were in town. We spent a week tramping along the Queen Charlotte Track with them and a good friend. This week, Grant's mother arrived from Canada for a two-week stay. Holidays are not as much of a production in New Zealand as they are in the U.S. and Canada, so we won't be chasing down any Easter eggs this year ... unlike last year when Little H joined friends for an egg hunt in Golden Gate Park.

Eggs are a traditional symbol of fertility and rebirth, and in the Christian celebration of Eastertide, they symbolize the empty tomb of Jesus. Like many Christian symbols, the practice predates Christianity to the early cultures of Mesopotamia and Crete. Decorated ostrich eggs over 60,000 years old have been found in Africa. Easter eggs have another meaning in our modern culture; they are little "treasures" buried in many popular movies. Disney/Pixar movies are arguably the most famous for this. Symbols and references to other movies, cultural references, etc are scattered throughout the films and people will spend hours scouring the images frame by frame looking for them.

You may not have noticed, but there are Easter eggs in our blog posts. Most are simple cultural references ... the hit you in the head with a hammer kind ... and others are a little more subtle. We certainly don't expect anyone to go back through all 35 of our previous posts, but if you find yourself on the couch listless after too much chocolate, see if you can find a few.

To get you started:

The title of this post, The Most Dangerous Game, is the title of a story written in 1924 by Richard Connell. The basic plot-line of the story is that a big game hunter falls off a ship in the Caribbean and swims to "safety" on nearby Ship-Trap Island. At first, he is treated well; but, he is eventually set "free" on the island to become the quarry of the hunter. It was one of my favourite short stories growing up, and I must have read it a dozen or more times. This blog post is about Easter egg hunts and the hunting theme is why I chose the title.

The opening quote is from The Hunt for Red October. Hopefully, no one needs an explanation of the plot in general or this scene specifically.

The closing picture was taken from my deer hunting stand in South Carolina.

Happy hunting ...