Snake Charmer

Just before 6 p.m. one Sunday, my friend Mariette was drinking tea with us on the patio. Suddenly the birds in the nearby tree started giving their alarm calls. Siegie and I looked at each other and both spoke at the same time: “Snake!” 

All three of us jumped up and dashed over to gaze up at the branches. A number of white eyes were hopping from perch to perch, flicking their wings and chirping in agitation. Somewhere in the background a batis joined in.

Clearly a major threat was nearby, but the foliage was too thick for us to see what it was. Then I stepped back from under the tree and looked up at it from further away. “There it is,” I cried excitedly. Gliding along a branch was the unmistakable underbelly of a boomslang.

Siegie and I left Mariette to keep an eye on the snake while we dashed inside to grab binoculars. Then all three of us went back under the tree and had a good close-up look. With a thick yellow belly and strong black markings, he was clearly a mature male in all his glory.

“He’s as long as my height,” said Siegie, but Mariette and I reckoned this was male posturing. We all agreed he was a big boy, though ­– certainly over a metre.

Binoculars glued to her eyes, Mariette edged around trying to get a good look. She was so enraptured that I feared she might fall into the goldfish pond.

After a few minutes, the snake slithered back into the foliage, the birds quietened down and we went back to our tea.

This isn’t the first time a boomslang has come to visit us. A couple of years ago, another large male hung around for three weeks or so, popping up in different trees every weekend. Always, the birds alerted us to his presence.

One day, while Siegie was away, I stepped out onto the patio to check on my feathered friends’ alarm calls and almost bumped into the boomslang entwined in a branch just above eye level. I’m not sure who got the bigger fright – we both beat a hasty retreat.

But the snake reappeared on the ground a while later, skirting around the pond. Then it suddenly lunged towards the pond, sending a frog leaping into the water. I watched, fascinated, as it stretched the front part of its body out over the water, its tongue flicking in and out as it swayed back and forth. But the frog was deeply submerged and wasn’t set to be a snake snack that day.

When I’d told Mariette about the experience she was sorry to have missed it, so I’m glad she was with us to share our latest “snack attack”. Who knows, maybe it’s the same big male that has claimed our garden as part of his private hunting preserve.

 

Crabby Feeling

Have you ever seen what happens to a crab if it has the misfortune to get sucked into a pool cleaner? Not a pretty sight. And if it’s been there a few days, not a pretty smell either. It gets wedged in so tightly that you have to throw the rubber thingamy away and buy a new one.

It’s happened to us a couple of times. Living near the river guarantees you crabs in your swimming pool now and then. My advice is to fish them out with a net as soon as possible and take them back down to the river. Of course, fishing them out can be quite fun, too: you can end up spending endless frustrating minutes chasing a recalcitrant crab as it scoots sideways around the bottom of the deep end.

It really is amazing how quickly these creatures can move. Once we found one in the kitchen and decided it shouldn’t remain there. Finally cornered, it raised its pincers in defence and I backed off. Even though my mind tells me a pincer on a five-centimetre-wide crab probably won’t inflict much pain I’d rather not find out.

Siegie came to the rescue with his tried-and-tested shrew-catching technique. He grabbed an empty plastic icecream tub, placed it over the crab and slipped a newspaper underneath. It works every time, so I can’t understand why I never think of doing it. Could it be a male thing?

My solutions are always far more complicated and have a high failure rate. Sometimes, though, I think it’s deliberate because I like to feel things. When I have managed to catch a crab and held it firmly around the carapace I’m amazed at how strong its legs are as they push at my fingers. I also get to look at it properly on my way down to the river, admiring its weird dark blobby eyes on their stalks and checking out those dangerous pincers.

Now here’s a thought: maybe we’re doing the crabs a disservice as they’re actually trying to escape the river. Frequent evidence of discarded crab shells on the banks show that they’re hunted mercilessly down there. I’ve always blamed the giant kingfisher, that great koi killer, but there are other predators patrolling the riverbed. A couple of times I’ve found big pellets on the ground composed largely of crab shells.

Then one summer a couple of years ago, I noticed a spotted eagle owl had taken to spending the day on a large rock. I refrained from disturbing him and we often spent time communing from our respective perches. Finally, I got to investigate his rock and found it covered in crab shells.

My owl book tells me that spotted eagle owls have a wide-ranging diet, including crustaceans. So that explains why there are now few crabs on our stretch of river and I haven’t seen an owl for a while. But they’ll be back – and I’ll be here to watch the cycle start again.

Praying for Survival

Climbing out of the shower one late autumn morning, I grabbed my towel and started to dry myself off. Thunk! Something fell to the ground and I immediately looked down. The culprit lay struggling on the tiles, a fat green praying mantid. “What were you doing there, you silly girl?” I asked as I took her to the bedroom and unceremoniously tipped her out of the window.

I knew she was a girl because she was so big and fat. Then suspicion set in and I investigated the towel. Sure enough, a half-finished nest clung to the edge. Without thinking, I started to scrape it off. Under the hardening shell was soft gooey yellow stuff and I realised these were probably the eggs. I hastily ran it under the tap in the basin, scraping until all of it was gone.

Despite the fact that the nest could not have been there very long, an ugly brown stain defied several washes. After a passing thought that I’d probably wiped out a generation of mantids, I soon forgot about it. A couple of months later, I was drawing the curtains in the bedroom to let in the beautiful spring morning light when I became aware of a horde of little creatures.

Everywhere I looked I saw tiny pale brown creepy crawlies. They littered the carpet, clung to the back of the curtains, hung on the wall and balanced precariously along the door frame. Curious, I leant closer to investigate one of them. Aha – a perfect little replica of that fat green giant. Its body was almost translucent and yet it still had the instinct the raise those front legs in the manner that gave it its name.

Was it praying I wouldn’t squash it? Well, its prayers got answered – but it was a close call. It’s easy to harm such a small body when you pick it up in clumsy fingers. As gently as possible I picked up bug after bug, collecting them in the palm of my left hand. With four or five of them threatening to crawl up my arm, I stepped outside and shook them off over the budding wisteria that covered the pergola.

I felt a certain sense of justice having taken place. While I’d ruined one nest of baby mantids, I’d saved another. But what is it that makes praying mantid mothers enter a house to lay their eggs? Most often, I’ve found them in our bedroom and adjoining bathroom. Could it be because the basic colour scheme is green?

I like my light green walls and I’m not about to redecorate. Those mantids foolish enough to enter will just have to keep praying for their survival.

Raptor Magic

I heard a really loud bird call on Monday afternoon that didn’t quite sound like a hadeda but what else could it have been? There was a rather distorted “ha” but no “de da”. So I went out down to the pond to investigate. Sure enough, a hadeda flew off so I decided that that’s what it must have been.

About 20 minutes later, I left to take the dogs for a walk and stopped dead in my tracks just outside the gate. An avian acrobat was at work on the thatched roof of our neighbours’ house – and it certainly wasn’t a hadeda.

Large grey body, black and white bands across the tail, long yellow legs, yellow face. There was no mistaking the African harrier-hawk flapping its large wings as it balanced on the angled roof. I watched with curiosity for a few minutes and guessed it was either on a kill or was stripping the thatch.

Not having my binoculars, I couldn’t really see what it was doing, though. And so the mystery would have remained if I hadn’t seen the damage to the thatch when I returned an hour and a half later. Poor neighbours. It’s wonderful to have wildlife on your roof, but not if it’s going to cost you a few thousand to repair the damage.

We’ve seen this beautiful bird of prey a few times lately. One recent Sunday, after a heavy lunch with Siegie’s mother, the three of us walked down to the pond to check out the koi. I threw some pellets on to the water and we watched idly as the fish lazily rose to the surface. With no algae in the water, we marvelled at its crystal clarity.

And so it was that all of us saw it at the same time. The reflection of an African harrier-hawk floated across the water, spreading its magnificent barred tail as it turned on the gentle breeze. 

We looked up and there it was, just metres above our heads. “Gymnogene!” Siegie and I both exclaimed, before remembering that this is one of the victims of South Africa’s recent fascination with name changes. It turned its big grey body and we clearly saw the bare yellow facial skin that is diagnostic.

It passed just above the trees on our boundary and landed in our neighbour’s palm tree. “Maybe it’s nesting there,” said Siegie hopefully, “like the one we saw in Kruger.”

Ah yes. We were in the Kruger National Park in January and spent a day up in the far north along the Luvhuvhu River. An African harrier-hawk on a nest in a palm tree was one of our treasured spots.

But this bird was more than likely scouting out nesting material rather than nesting in our neighbours’ garden. After a few minutes, it took off, skimmed the rooftop and headed off towards Constantia Nek.

And that is more than likely where it’s nesting, in one of the tall pines of Cecilia Plantation. Indeed, a week or so later Siegie and I saw a couple soaring just above the treetops at the start of the footpath leading up to the Back Table.

According to our bird book, September-October is peak breeding season for the African harrier-hawk, a bird that’s more likely to be found in the Cedarberg. Is it possible that we might have a breeding pair at the top of our beautiful valley? It would be a real treat to see more of these big raptors in our skies.

Prickly Customers

We were driving along the M3 towards the city centre around 11 o’clock one night a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly, something ran across the road in the distance just before UCT. “What’s that?” Siegie asked.

It was too big to be a cat and had a strange shuffling gait. As we drew alongside, we both saw the animal’s spiky backside and knew immediately what it was. “Porcupine!” we cried in unison.

Strangely, this is the very first time we’ve seen a porcupine in the Cape peninsula. It’s strange because we know that they thrive on the mountain slopes and have even adapted to the greener edges of suburbia.

The evidence of their activity is often to be seen in the form of scraped out holes and the empty husks of dug up bulbs. But at this time of year, when the winter rains plump up the arums lilies, they shamelessly raid gardens such as the one we nurture on the banks of the Hout Bay River.

And that’s why I’m always facing a conflict of interest. I love the thought of wildlife in my garden and go out of my way to attract creatures through planting tasty indigenous fare. But porcupines and I both love arum lilies and I wish they wouldn’t be quite so destructive.

The morning after a night when porcupines come up from the river to dine in our garden looks like tiny landmines have gone off all over the flower beds. Arum leaves and flowers lie discarded in the mounds of earth – it’s only the juicy stuff below ground that makes a porcupine meal. Often an isolated quill points to the culprit.

You’d think a big dog that sleeps outside at night would scare them off. But Rhea, our ridgeback, learned the hard way to leave well alone.

Early one morning, when she was about a year old, Siegie was in the kitchen putting the kettle on when he noticed her walk past outside. Even in the half light something looked odd, so he opened the door and discovered three quills in her back legs.

We called our vet, who suggested we not try to remove the quills ourselves but rather to cut them off with pliers. And since it wasn’t life-threatening, we could bring her in when the surgery opened.

Rhea and I were at the clinic at 8.15. The vet took one look at the quill embedded at a nasty angle in her thigh muscle and said he’d need to knock her out. It’s no wonder she now gives porcupines a wide berth – and she’d avoid the vet too if she could.

So these prickly customers have free rein in our garden, even venturing right up to the patio. We found a quill there the other day and know they’re staking out the juiciest plants. The War of the Arums is about to begin.

 

Goose Bumps

Late one afternoon I was crossing the lawn when I was distracted by a high-pitched piping call. A lost gosling appeared from the undergrowth, calling for help but receiving no response. I picked it up and searched the garden for an adult Egyptian goose in vain. 

Resolving to take it to the World of Birds first thing the next morning, I tried feeding it a mushy cereal, but it wasn’t interested. I put it in a cardboard box lined with a towel and closed it in the spare bedroom so that our cat couldn’t get at it.

I left it there with a saucer of water – foolishly. In the morning, the poor little thing was cold and wet and barely alive. Rushing to the car, I cursed myself for not thinking of the importance of keeping it warm and dry. Sadly, it died before I reached the end of the road.

Yes, many goslings do die, but Egyptian geese are still one of the most abundant birds around. Give them a patch of water with grassy fields nearby and they’ll thrive. What could be better than the Hout Bay River, flanked with grassy open spaces and bodies of water like the holding pond above Longkloof Weir.

Peak breeding season is approaching and there’s no peace in our valley these days. At first light the cacophony starts up, rises to a haggling crescendo, then drops down to a steady, monotonous “kaah, kaah, kaah, kaah.”

The other morning we were idly watching two geese involved in an aerial dogfight and I wondered aloud why they don’t land on our roof. “Probably don’t like corrugated iron,” said Siegie. “There’s no grip for their feet.”

Instead, they land on our neighbour’s nice tiled roof. One does just that around 8am and soon starts advertising her presence. Honking loudly, she marches along the top edge, stopping now and then to cock her head and listen, shaking her tail. Shameless hussy.

Both male and female geese look alike, but I know it’s a “she” because of her loud mouth. Like a fishwife, she shouts out and others shout back at her from the pine trees on the other side of the river.

If our mother goose is lucky, her mate will land beside her to join her rooftop patrol. Stretching out his neck, his rasping hiss is a far more genteel style of communication.

Once the goslings appear and the geese settle into being attentive parents, I know I’ll forget all about those annoying wake-up calls. If I’m lucky, I’ll watch in wonder as mum and dad herd their brood of tiny fluffy brown creatures towards our koi pond.

Such vulnerable babes need vigilant parents’ in order to survive the rough ride to adulthood. Goshawks and other birds of prey can’t wait to get their talons into them, not to mention the threat posed by domestic pets.

You really can’t blame Mr and Mrs Goose for honking and hissing then. After all, we get in a flap too if our kids are threatened. It’s enough to give you goose bumps …

A Nest of Trouble

Sociable wasps are decidedly unsociable. Like overgrown winged ants, these creatures get their name from their communal nests segmented rather like the honeycombs that bees build. They’re obviously very nice to their own kind, but let a mere human get too close and they respond with intense hostility.

I love pottering in my garden, losing myself in the flower beds for hours on end. I go out to feed the koi and stop to pull out a weed on the way. Before I know it, I’ve pulled out dozens, the sun has raced across the sky and the koi are still hungry.

There’s a rock in one section of the garden, placed there as a feature. One flatish side is perfect for building a sociable wasp nest. I found this out one day as I was pulling weeds and ventured too close. An angry monster flew at my hand, resulting in several minutes of throbbing pain.

Over the next few weeks, I kept forgetting about these hostile inhabitants. Again and again, deep in thought, I’d wander too close and get stung. They’re remarkably effective at banishing intruders.

Indeed, Nic, one of our neighbours, believes we should encourage them to set up home around the house. When I went to visit him to discuss Neighbourhood Watch issues, he took great delight in pointing out the sociable wasp nest above an outside door. Great deterrents against burglars, he reckons.

The problem, though, is that these unsociable dive-bombers won’t discriminate between friend and foe. And the last thing you want is to deter your friends.

A couple of years ago, I watched with trepidation as a nest started to develop on the decking above our entertainment area. I left it because nature reigns supreme in our corner of paradise – and also because I was intrigued to see what would happen.

Fortunately, as time has shown, the wasps are far enough above our heads to not feel threatened by us. I keep a wary eye on them, nevertheless – and refrain from mentioning them to our friends. 

Nature in All Her Glory

So there I was lying in bed on Sunday morning reading and writing and watching the rain come down. By mid-afternoon, it was still coming down – although I was, I hasten to say, out of bed.

I stuck my head out of the patio door and heard the sound of rushing waters and grinding rocks. “I’m going to check the river,” I shouted to Sieg.

Bundled up against the cold, I set out under a huge golf umbrella. The soggy ground squelched under my over-sized royal blue Wellies as I made my way across the lawn, faithful Duma at my side.

Duma is a ridgeback. At 14 months old, he looks like an adult dog but he’s just a small boy in a big body. He never wants to be far from his human mother, even if it means braving the cold and wet. Foolish creature.

Together we made our way down the path to the river, sweeping aside the wet branches. And there was our normally placid mountain stream, an unrecognisable raging torrent.

Gone were the large rocks that stand guard in the middle and provide precarious stepping stones to our neighbours.

 The tree that normally stands on the bank opposite our bench was now surrounded by water, its branches sweeping in the gusting wind.

Of course, the rocks weren't really gone. They were just submerged, their positions marked by standing waves thrown up as the waters pushed against them.

I rushed back to the house to get my camera and to call Siegie to join me. Back down on the river bank, we took some photos and video clips for posterity and agreed that this was about the highest we’d ever seen the water.

Then I went back to the warmth of the fire in the sitting room while Siegie decided he ought to clear the gutters of leaves. In the pouring rain. Foolish creature.

At the same time, he emptied the rain gauge. We normally read it at 8am, but it only holds 100 millimetres. By the end of the afternoon, we’d already had 95 and still the rain came down.

As I write this on Tuesday morning, the sun is shining and there’s a huge mopping-up operation taking place around Cape Town. We ended up measuring 129 millimetres in 24 hours here in our garden and thanked God we had good drainage.

Others were not so blessed. My heart goes out to those who live in shacks. The lucky ones only had to deal with leaking roofs. But hundreds of impoverished Capetonians were forced to flee their homes, with everything they own soaked in flood waters. They can’t afford the luxury of being able to step back and admire the power of Nature in all her glory.

 

Lazy Sunday

It’s Sunday morning and I’m lying in bed.  Here, under the duvet, I’m feeling warm and lazy.

But outside the rain beats down and mist hangs over the mountain. It takes my mind back three years to when my sister, Anne, and I were training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

It had been an impulsive decision to take on Africa’s highest peak, spurred on by my adventurous friend Binny. I’d idly been building my “bucket list” – all those things I want to do before I die. When I mentioned Kilimanjaro, she jumped in and offered to join me.

I asked Anne along because it seemed right to journey together back to East Africa. We’d grown up on a farm in Kenya and once glimpsed that iconic snowy outline of Kili’s summit while on a family holiday. It had never seriously entered my mind to climb it, but suddenly the plan was in place.

We had five months to prepare ourselves, so Anne and I set aside every Saturday for a long mountain walk together. The thing about living in Cape Town is that we’re surrounded by mountains and spoilt for choice.

Many times we chose to climb our beloved Table Mountain. Those Saturdays became adventures in themselves, for we set ourselves to discover as many paths across the back table as possible.

It was like reliving our childhood on a grand scale. Instead of roaming our garden, climbing trees and playing hide-and-seek among the canna lilies, we were roaming mountains. More than 40 years melted away and we delighted in our companionship.

As winter set in, the weather became more unpredictable. We learned the special joy of walking in the rain, when few ventured out and we could go for hours without seeing another soul. Then we’d find a small cave or overhang where we could shelter and eat lunch.

Food somehow tastes so much better when you’ve worked for it. We’d scoff our wholewheat sandwiches like they were a royal feast and follow up with crunchy Cape apples that filled our mouths with sweet tanginess. But the very best we saved till last.

Hot chocolate. Oh my. If you’ve never sipped hot chocolate in a dripping cave in the mountains and watched the rain driving down on a gusty wintry wind, you haven’t lived.

One day we were hunched in a tiny cave just off the path on the Twelve Apostles savouring mugs of hot chocolate. Suddenly, out of the mist four poncho-covered figures appeared, walking in single file. Heads down against the rain, they silently walked past without even realising that we were there.

I was telling my husband, Siegie, that story and how special we had felt when we walked in the mountains in the rain. “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Mmmmm. It’s so warm here, under my duvet, and it looks so cold and so wet outside. Part of me wants to go, but another part wants to stay exactly where she is.

The latter part wins – for now.

 

Who Are the Victims?

Yesterday, I saw a lady whose nine-year-old daughter was raped three months ago. We talked about how she felt now that the man who had taken away her child’s innocence had been convicted and given a life sentence.

“I feel like something heavy has been lifted from my heart,” she told me. No longer did she need to fear that this monster would be released to threaten her family and other little girls in her community. For he was also found guilty of raping a three-year-old, another mother’s child.

It’s hard sometimes to remain objective in the face of such horrific behaviour. My emotional being is glad that this pervert is no longer on our streets, but my rational being wonders what pain this young man must have suffered in his past to react in this way.

For I know that he witnessed the murder of his mother when he was only 14. He never received counselling to help him cope with the anger and the fear and the hopelessness. And he is not alone.

Countless children around South Africa live with anger and fear. The government needs to employ thousands of social workers and counsellors rather than police officers. It makes me angry to think that they rely on fund-starved NGOs to fill this gaping hole.

It’s way past time to focus on preventing crimes rather than mopping up the mess afterwards.

Close Encounter of the Toad Kind

Siegie, my husband, was reading the newspaper one evening recently. “That’s what it was,” he burst out. “A leopard toad.”

Of course, I should have recognised that he was continuing the conversation we’d had at 6.30 that morning when I was half asleep. But I was a bit slow on the uptake so he read out the relevant section of the report about the snoring sound these endangered creatures make during their 10-day courtship, a sound that he swore he’d heard. To make sure, he turned to the Internet and found a “soundbite” that he downloaded for me to hear.

A couple of hours later, he dragged me outside onto the patio. “Listen,” he said. And there it was, a low rasping noise that sounded just like what we’d listened to on the computer earlier.

We headed out onto the lawn to try to pinpoint where it was coming from. Naturally, it stopped and we stood like frozen statues in the chill night air waiting for it to start again. The long minutes dragged on, then a short rasp and we were able to home in on the koi pond.

Silence. Finally, Siegie switched on the portable spotlight and shone it all around the edge of the pond, but there was nothing to see. We gave up and headed indoors.

As soon as we got inside, of course, it started up again. We went out and walked all around the pond shining the light into every nook and cranny. The toad was clearly somewhere in the tangle of wild rosemary but he remained hidden.

We went to sleep that night – and the next few nights – to the sound of Leopold serenading his prospective mate. He certainly got full points for trying, and hopefully he succeeded. A host of little leopard toadlets in our koi pond would, no doubt, be welcomed by the koi. It might stop them from eating their own young for a change.

For us, it was a thrill to hear Leopold even if we didn’t see him. You might say we had a close encounter of the toad kind.