Wildlife and Week 5




Week 5

There are many wild animals that can cause you harm in Africa. A lion can leap and rip you to ribbons in minutes. Ellies can trample your tent and tusk your tooshie. Crocs can crunch you into a corpse in less time than it takes to say “wildebeest!” Hippos can hurt you. Rhinos can ruin your day. Mosquitoes can malarialize you. The list goes on.

But there is only one species that can steal your soul. One lowdown creature, lower than the rest, lower than lemurs, lower than lichen. One lifeform who looks to live from your loss, even when it’s not hungry.

I’m talking, obviously, about homo sapiens.

Recall what I had mentioned about our “urban safari” into Cape Town being our most dangerous travel to date. While we did escape the city, free from harm, we discovered, several days later, whilst trying to pay our American Express bills online, that we had charged airline tickets, electronics, and lots of meals in Cape Town. Hmmm…except that we were back here ensconced in De Kelders while these alleged charges were transacted.

Yes, we phoned right away. Yes, we spoke to several unhelpful folks in Bangalore. Yes, it seems that the hold we placed on the account is holding. But, the troubling part of the story is that the credit cards are still in our wallets, seemingly content and undisturbed. Which begs the question, how the hell did the bad guys get our info from the cards, and who lets someone charge over $1000 worth of electronics without asking for ID?

We are now trying to further deal with American Express, “Yes, leave home without it!” It’s gotten to the absurd as all of the documents we faxed from the internet cafĂ© to prove that we are who we say we are prove to be not enough and now they want to hold a conference call with my brother, Dan, who is an Amex cardholder so that he can verify that it is Mimi’s voice! My initial reaction is “So, why all the security features employed on this end, when there were apparently not too many on the front end?”

Oh well. Like I said, it’s a jungle out there.

While I’m talking about animal life, let me tell you a bit about the animals native to our locale.

Here in De Kelders, we are far from the game parks and all those famous national geo land mammals. We plan to make some journeys that direction before long. But we do have our share of animalia here.

Mammals: While it isn’t yet whale season, that’s August – November, springtime down south, when our fellow intelligent mammals come closer to the equator and check-in to our cozy little bay to grab some nookie and have some calves. That will be cool, but to date we have only spotted whales on two occasions.

Seal, or sea lions, whichever is correct, do frolic just offshore from us here in the rental. Mimi can spot them like a game guide, while I can’t tell a flipper from the kelp that bobs in the waves and camouflages the little critters perfectly against their nemesis shark dudes. The seals, there are about six or eight who hang here, loll about on their backs, they wave (to us, we believe), they dive for munchies, they chase each other like kindergartners on recess. Very cool.

Dassies, or rock hyraxes, are rodent-like beaver-ish furry devils that inhabit the boulder zones at the bottom of the cliffs, edge of the sea. They are also found at the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town, and, I suppose, wherever there are rocks and free food. They are harmless and shy and scatter when we approach on the seaside trails.
My only experience, and probably yours, with mongooses (geese?) was in that Rudyard Kipling story, Rikki-tikki-tavi. Now, I am on more a familiar basis with the critters. Our friend, Gerhard, has lots of them in the yard of his B and B. They hop-hop-hop out of the fynbos and with a wiggle of their little nose they snatch the leftovers right from his hand.

Birdlife abounds. Not just the white gulls, but the black cormorants, too, (keeping with the “rainbow nation” theme.) The numbers of cormorants that pass us in a flying wedge formation (outlawed in football years ago, but still legal for birds, except the Seahawks, I guess) is unbelievable. Some evenings, around sunset, the parade goes on for hours, unbroken v’s, each one with maybe fifty birds, zooming just above sea level, all going the same direction, commuter traffic, since they all went the other way in the morning, endless. It makes the water appear to ripple, but on closer inspection through the binoc’s it’s the hordes of birds. “Mr. Hitchcock, you’re wanted on location.. Ms. Hedron, please take your mark…!”

The local birdlife seems to love the fynbos (fain boss) and we are surrounded by the bushes, so awake each morning to a chorus of chirps, screeches, and songs. And that’s just the workers doing the remodel job across the street! No, really, it is quite a nice way to wake up, if there is such a thing.

Francolins, or guinea fowl, run at will through De Kelders. When we jog they cross the road…why? we don’t know. They flurry out of the underbrush in groups of five or six when we hike the trails, much like the dassies. I guess they can fly, but they seem to prefer hustling over the ground.

Out of town, along the highways and up into the hills, we have spotted numerous hawks, gorgeous red ones, usually perched on a telephone line, checking for field mice and taking flight when we stop to snap their photos.

Reptiles and Amphibians: We have seen several beautiful tortoises in the back yard and along the roads. Cute guys. We’ve seen a couple of small snakes, no longer than a foot, squashed on the asphalt. And in our neighbor’s garden across the street there are some cool-sounding frogs.

Insects. Well, there are mosquitoes, but we bought this little machine that takes these little blue thingies that supposedly give off some odor that the mossies find yucky. Seems to work, mostly. Crickets, however, seem to find the smell to their liking, as we have thumped several in the master bedroom, inches from Mimi’s side of the bed, abruptly pulling the plug on their evening concerts. Scorpions are not strangers to us, being from AZ, where the son of a guns can ruin your day, and Saudi, where they can actually cause your demise. But, in all our years in those places we only saw them once or twice, aside from tours to the Desert Museum. So, what’s with finding the buggers twice so far in our short SA stay!? On two separate occasions a trip to the bathroom has been followed by an “Aaaarghhh!” We can’t figure out how they get up to the second floor, but people assure us that this variety’s sting is no deadlier than a bee sting. Even so, a midnight trip to the loo isn’t complete without a torch. (Even so, a midnight trip to the ‘toilet’ isn’t complete without a ‘flashlight.’)

Fish and mollusks. Well, there are plenty of fish out there in the sea! Isn’t that what your mother told you? Buitensteen’s Pub has a couple mean-ass fish trophies mounted on the wall scowling, razor-toothed buggers. And the swords of unfortunate sword fish. Also, a wall or two are completely papered in the opalescence of abalone shells. The Chinese have a thing about these shell creatures, like they do about rhino horn, elephant tusk, and any other endangered species, it seems. So, this has created a problematic black market in abalone, and they have been taken almost to extinction from the shoals along our shore. There is quite a mafia engaged in this, to the point that a helicopter buzzes overhead every few days, and a red-painted boat patrols the shores trying to apprehend these poachers.

I’m not a fisherman, nor even big on eating fish, but the local fresh calamari is exquisite, the mussels rubbery good, and the fish ‘n chips flaky and delish. The fishing boats do their crawl past us, evenings mostly, headlights with their brights on, a kilometer or three off shore, and nets outstretched. Keep up the good work, men.
Once we start travelling further afield, I'll try to keep up posting about the animals we encounter. Till then, Bear Down.

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