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.