The Horse Whisperer

 During our stay in the UK we came across a small band of genuine gypsies living in a small clearing in the New Forest.

One of the young ladies, living in an old horse trailer, proudly showed us her humble abode complete with a tiny stove for cooking and warding off the bitter English winters.

The pride of her life was her magnificent horse. From the outset it was clear that this was no ordinary horse, and that there was a very special bond between the two of them. In order to demonstrate this she repeatedly cracked a whip right next to the horses head. Note the whip in her hand, and draped over the horse between cracks. It didn't even blink an eye.

After the loud cracks she laid down the whip and touched the animal while whispering to it. This is what transpired:

It was quite an impressive performance, to say the least.

As she showed us around, I enquired about the rumours about fairies and elves in the New Forest.
She assured me there were indeed fairies in the forest. She noticed that I didn't believe her, and found her earnestness rather amusing.

She was quite adamant and insisted that I come back the next week at full moon. She would take me to a nearby glade, where I could see the fairies for myself.

When I asked her if we needed to smoke some mushrooms before venturing ino the forest under the full moon she did not find it amusing at all.

En of a new-found friendship.

Caterpillar train

Mimicking a snake

Some of the larger caterpillars use patterns and colour to mimic snakes, displaying large 'eyes' on the sides of their heads or tails. In doing so they appear less appetising for birds.

These little caterpillarshowever, measuring only about 3cm, won't get away with that. So instead they grew toxic hair all over their bodies. They also adopted the strategy of forming long trains of up to two metres when foraging for food - hence the term 'processionary caterpillars'. In this way they can fool birds into mistaking them for a snake instead of individual meals.

These are the larval stage of the moth Thaumetopoea apologetica.

I wonder what they are apologising for? After all, the more successful mommy is, the longer the snake.

Just gone live on Kindle

24 Selected stories with pictures from this blog have now been published in book-form.
Available from Amazon Kindle at $0.99.

The Gigantic Mole

I abhor killing things. But there comes a time...

Yesterday I noticed a mole-hill the size of an African ant hill that had appeared in my garden in less than two hours. I was hoping the guy would head somewhere else.

He didn't.

Watering the garden this afternoon I noticed fresh activity with sand and soil being pushed up as he was sinking a new shaft.
Dropping the hosepipe, I fetched the garden fork.
After waiting patiently for some twenty minutes, he was shoving up a fresh heap, and I struck.

Nearly as big as a small Jack Russell.
I did apologise profusely to Mother Nature, but there are millions of these guys on the Cape West Coast, but I only have one garden...

Stealing the horn off a living rhino.

So, it's National Rhino Day, eh?
Let me share this with you - it happened in the hectic days when we battled to restore sanity in the Maputo Zoo.
There was a single ancient rhino in a sunken enclosure, spending its days staring myopically at the concrete wall. That was simply what its life consisted of: no-one could tell us how long it had been in that tiny enclosure.

It was extremely docile and did not mind being touched. Some visitors took advantage of this, and when no-one was looking they would scrape shavings off its horn. They sure kept it short. We were never able to catch anyone in the act, and the guards simply didn't seem to care two hoots. They were probably the culprits.

It was so bad, some visitors even scratched graffiti into its skin. Look closely:

We are so inclined to ascribe human emotions to animals. It is my fervent hope that the word "dignity" is beyond the comprehension of rhinos. This poor animal had been stripped bare of anything remotely dignified by a bunch of savages.

Crocodiles fighting.

You are probably familiar with the term "crocodile tears". Check out the guy on the right.

During the civil war in Mozambique Dr Cobus Raath and myself spent some five years of our free time trying to restore the Maputo Zoo and keep the animals alive. A lot of the animals had died of malnutrition or had ended up over cooking fires by the time we intervened. The crocodiles, however, were breeding like rabbits. Procuring enough food for them was becoming a problem and we were running out of space, resulting in more and more serious fights for dominance.

We eventually managed to release some of the mature animals back into the wild in South Africa, but this was a story on its own - refer back to the blog post "The Maputo Crocodiles", dated 15/07/2013.

Up to then, the big males had been tearing into each other on a regular basis.

It was not uncommon to see some of them them covered in blood:

Most of the time treatment was not required, but now and again we had no choice but to step in with a little TLC. Considering what the business ends of these monsters look like, it was never a task to be taken lightly.

In those early days we were young an rather inexperienced, The dart had to be extremely sharp, and the pressure in the delivery device had to be adequate. If not, the dart with the tranquiliser would merely bounce back from the thick skin, revving up the crock and making it "the moer in".

Retrieving the dart was dicey, requiring a very flight-footed approach.

The good doctor (now professor) Raath was not even wearing running shoes, but he was clearly ready to take off.

Yeah, man, such was the frivolcy of youth, and steep was the learning curve...

Deep-sea hippo charging

I have just returned from a seven week road trip, and have many tales and pictures to share. I have also managed to dig up some old photographs relating to older blogs - I'll be sharing these soon.

But let's start with the offshore hippo:

Linga is an achipelago located in a very secluded nook on the of paradsie in unspoilt Mozambique, on the East Coast of Africa. It requires 45 Km of very tough 4x4 going through deep, hot sand to get there.
Once there, it consists of five dwellings, ensconced in coconut palms and surrounded by sugary white sand - and miles and miles of solitude. Once you have schlepped through all this with you ski-boat in tow, the ordeal is suddenly worth all the sweat an tears. Launching through the surf is a push-over, and out there the barracuda, sailfish and wahoos are panting for your lures.
Going out early one morning, we came across one of the most puzzling sights I have ever seen - from a depth of 15 metres, the bottom angled up steeply to expose a small sandy island in the middle of nowhere, three kilometres from shore.
Instead of the expected single palm tree with a marooned blonde sitting in the shade, there was a single querulous hippo eyeing us with malice.

According to the locals, the nearest hippos were in a river some 20 clicks up the coast.
We didn't have a proper camera on the boat but Ben was clicking away merrily with his Smartphone, urging Piet to go closer. Despite the hippo's body language we deemed this a safe move, being in deep water, with two 150 Hp motors idling on the transom.

The next moment the hippo charged full-tilt and Piet slammed the throttles to the gate. Everyone except Ben were in their seats and were thus able to handle the sudden acceleration safely.

Not so Ben. Fortunately he dropped his phone (preserving the evidence) in his futile attempts to grab onto something substantial before executing a perfect somersault into the drink, right between the outboards. His eyes said it all: he knew perfectly well that somewhere below him on the sandy bottom, two tons of malicious intent was zeroing in on him, hell-bent on cutting him in half.

Piet being a well-salted skipper, made a tight U-turn and Ben was retrieved with utmost haste. The water was still turbulent from the churning props when the hippo surfaced behind the transom, bellowing belligerently.

Such is Africa.