Nature; She Is All Around Me

The boys and I rattle around in this huge house now with far too many pets and far too much wildlife all around us. We have had one dog carted off by a wild cat (Rooikat) which is like a small lion and another uplifted by a Crested Eagle who mistook the dog for a small buck. The eagle dropped said dog into the lagoon and I can only imagine that the eagle shat itself when the “buck” instead of calmly accepting its fate, barked at the eagle and tried to take a chomp out of it mid flight. The dog lived despite 42 stitches to its legs. The rooikat won in the first wildlife saga.

Our menagerie has grown quite dramatically in the last few weeks since the chap went MIA. I think it has been a welcome distraction for all of us to be taking care of the new additions instead of stewing over the detail of the disappearance and worrying ourselves sick.

We have old faithful yellow dog, Tango who is a deaf as a post but loving and dependable. We added Victor about three weeks ago after Bruce the bed king took off on another of his jollies never to return. Victor is loud and totally irresponsible. He barks at his own shadow which is good since we live on the outskirts of town in the middle of a forest, so loud and indiscriminate barking is good and makes me feel safe. And with his arrival we are only twenty four dogs short of  the complete phonetic alphabet.

Bruce I fear used up all of his canine lives by tussling with the bush pig once too often. It was inevitable. I mean now many times did he have to be stitched back together again after mauling the poor pig?

The dog was incorrigible. He had a go at a porcupine in the drying yard too on a number of occasions. It is quite some trick extricating porcupine quills out of the face and chest of a pit bull terrier at two in the morning who is still showing every sign of rampant blood lust.

He ate my car, did Bruce, which became a favourite past time. No car was safe venturing down our cul de sac. Some poor sod would come Sunday driving looking for the beach and end up beating a hasty retreat with a pit bull attached to the front or rear bumper and he would not quit until both number plates were off said vehicle and the occupants thereof required therapy and tranquilisers. Until Bruce disappeared, strangers in these parts were all quite ashen faced standing at our gate clutching car parts to their chests and shaking spasmodically. Life has been a little calmer since he left and a lot more sociable.

Then there is Puppy who is not a puppy at all but a hybrid cross between a miniature pavement special and a small buck with rat genes somewhere in the mix. She is our intrepid survivor. Eagle nil, Puppy one. She is quite reticent about the outdoors and I don't blame her.

The new kittens are a delight and are named Ginger and Wasabi. The cousin's kitten is named Sushi. We had to hold the theme and seeing the one kitten is, well, Ginger, and the other a dull grey with green eyes, Wasabi was a natural choice.

Don't ask me please how my youngest named the hamsters Fruit and Veggie.

Add to this the fact that we have no doors in the passage of our house or windows for that matter, but large gated arches that are open to the elements. I really don't mind the elements. Elements that come through the arches can be wiped up, swept out or otherwise mopped; not so the almost Darwinesque collective of creatures that slither, crawl, shimmy, slime, fly and scramble into our otherwise marginally ordered lives.

My post bath time, bedtime, do your homework routine was shattered a few months ago when I took my well earned mommy shower - that's the one where you hang onto the wall and let the water just drown out the demands in the background - and towelled off sharing said towel with a metre long black mamba who had bedded down in the linen cupboard. The chap was still here and I must say he earned my love and respect that night for chasing the rather pissed off snake away from his screaming, stark naked and hysterically leaping wife and smashing its head off with a number one wood. It was the most action the golf club has seen since its manufacture and I do highly recommend golf clubs as effective snake eliminators.

We have about a zillion gecko's in the house too which are near impossible to get rid of. They are both a blessing and a curse these transparent little lizards. They eat bugs and things that fly and crawl rather efficiently but then defecate incessantly all over everything and have a nasty habit, the bigger ones do, of losing their grip and dropping off ceilings onto you, usually in the dead of night.

We have also had a 2 meter long legavaan lizard lick my leg through my study door. Of course the boys thrive and have scorpion farms and collect insects that defy belief most of which they do not even have to venture outside to find which is rather disturbing. For me, well, as I said, far too much wildlife.

Thank God there are no rampant rhino because I swear if there were, they would use my lawn to frolic around on – we seem to attract beasts like the Arc.

[this post started with a cut and paste out of a letter I wrote last night to my friend Naomi in London..thanks Nomes for your inspiration; baby girl I think you have helped me unblock my block...]