Installment 25

The Fosa is the top of the food chain in Madagascar. It's a mongoose-cum-mountain lion that belongs to the endemic Malagasy carnivorans family.

I just realized I haven't posted on this topic in nearly a month. It's strange. Time slowed time at the start of this pandemic, and just seems to get faster as it wears on and we adapt to the "new normal". The good news here is that after exploding a month ago, the virus has been beaten back, and there is only a moderate number of new cases each day. The bad news is that my town has become the "epicenter" of the virus in Madagascar in the last two weeks; declared as such by a French newspaper. There are at least 50 critical cases, and quite a few deaths. Despite this, schools are opening, or already open. Domestic flights have resumed. And there are plans for the resumption of international travel in October. The local spike notwithstanding, this is probably the right call at this point. We have learned a lot about how to live with these blasted fragments of DNA.