A Snake in the Boot

It rained last Thursday night and the patio was still wet on Friday morning. I grabbed my gumboots, which reside just outside the sliding door, and slipped them on. “Yikes – what was that?” I asked Duma, my ridgeback shadow.

I knew something had taken up refuge in my boot as soon as my right foot touched the ground. I managed to withdraw it before putting any weight down and shook the boot out.

Countless books on the wide outdoors warn that you should shake your shoes out before putting them on. Once I crushed a creature in my boot – a snail that went “crunch” and spread slime over my socks. This time, I knew it wasn’t a snail but was certainly not expecting the tiny snake that dropped to the ground after I’d given the boot a hard knock.

It was brown, thin and around 20 centimetres long. Recognising it as a harmless common slug-eater, I picked it up by its tail to move it to a safer location. It didn’t like that and started to twist around, setting Duma on high alert. I told him not to be foolish and tossed the reptile into a nearby fern.

Many people back away from snakes in fear. Indeed, most snakes justify such a reaction, but slug-eaters are different. Up to 40 centimetres in length, they’re completely harmless. Except to slugs and snails, their only food source.

Naturally shy creatures, slug-eaters normally hide away under lawn edges or leaf litter. Not long ago I disturbed one when I was clearing fallen leaves off the path down to the river. It was tightly rolled in a messy tangle, which is why it’s called a “tabakrolletjie” in Afrikaans.

I picked it up, laid it on the palm of my hand and watched it unroll, head-first. There’s something beautiful about the way a snake moves. I let it slide sinuously through my fingers, playing it between my hands, marvelling at the cool and smooth feeling, watching its tiny forked tongue flick in and out. Eventually, I lowered my hand to the ground and it slithered off into the undergrowth.

Other creatures in our garden are not always so kind to slug-eaters. Once, I found one being attacked by Trixie, a little terrier I thought would never harm a fly. But a terrier is a terrier: she dealt a mortal blow before I could intervene.

Another time, Siegie and I were idly watching a group of hadedas aerating the lawn with their long bills in search of a tasty worm or caterpillar. One of them was probing along the edging when it suddenly pulled out a fully grown slug-eater. You could almost see the shock as it wondered what to do with the wriggling reptile. Fortunately, it dropped it and the snake beat a hasty retreat.

Yesterday was a perfect gardening day. Picking up my boots, and mindful of Friday’s experience, I knocked them against the wall and tipped them upside down. Blow me down – the same little snake spilled out. Silly little snake. You can’t hold me responsible if you get crushed.

It's Enough to Send You Batty

It was dark by the time our friends arrived for dinner. They’d never been to our house before so we showed them around. “Do you get a good view from up here?” asked Judy when we got to the upstairs bedroom.

I opened the sliding door onto the deck and we walked out to stand at the edge of the railing, breathing in the fresh night air. Suddenly, with a whoosh, a large creature flew up and over our heads. “What on earth was that?” I wondered.

Its wingbeat was far too noisy for an owl, I reasoned. Then we saw more of them, twisting and turning up and around the trees, and realised they must have been bats. We’re used to seeing bats in the early evening, but they’re usually small ones that flit around chasing bugs. These were much bigger and the only flying animals I could think of to match that size would be fruit bats.

Checking my trusty field guide, I found that Egyptian fruit bats frequent our area, roosting in caves on Table Mountain during the day in large colonies. At night, they travel several kilometres in search of a suitable tree, where they no doubt gorge themselves silly.

I’d never been aware of their presence before, but it made sense that they were visiting our garden. At this time of year, our waterberry trees are bursting with plump, deep-red berries and we have unknowingly created Bat Paradise.

I had a chance to have a good look at fruit bats a couple of years ago, when we were in the Kruger Park. While entering a public loo at one of the bushveld camps, I disturbed a group of them roosting under the eaves in a secluded corner of what was obviously a little-visited facility. Most of them flew up into the nearby trees and settled on high branches to hang like dried out bunches of leaves. Annoyed that I’d left my binoculars in the car, I gave up trying to make out their features.

Then I turned back towards the eaves to see a lone bat hanging face-down and staring at me with unblinking eyes. I stood still for several minutes, mesmerised by a face that looked for all the world like that of a small dog. It reminded me of a miniature version of Rhea, our ridgeback, lying upside down with her long snout pointing out and watching my every move.

Now, when I open our bedroom curtains in the morning to reveal dark-red fruity splashes across our plate-glass windows, I can picture exactly what the culprits look like. I’m thankful they’re not as big as Rhea – and that our house is made of facebrick rather than plastered and painted. That sort of clean-up job would be guaranteed to send anyone batty.

Wanted: Lawn Order

I found a dead mole floating in the swimming pool recently. Good, I thought cruelly, as I scooped it out and threw it into the bushes. One less on the lawn.

Our lawn, you see, is pock-marked with earth and we’re fighting a losing battle. Actually, the problem is we’re not really fighting – we’re sitting back and allowing the mole terrorists to overrun our land. Siegie, who feels more deeply scarred by the incursion since he’s the mower, calls them “ghastly demons from the subterranean depths of hell” and suggests it may be time to get hold of The Moleman.

But we all know that if you want to rid your garden of moles your neighbours have to join in the fight. That’s because moles don’t respect walls and fences. They’ll be tunnelling back into your garden before you take that first celebratory sip of gin and tonic on the patio.

Besides, there’s your conscience to deal with. What we have in our garden are golden moles, not molerats. While the latter are rodents with large, ugly yellow teeth bent on destroying your plants, true moles are cute little insectivores that burrow under the surface looking for bugs and earthworms. They serve the vital function of helping to keep insect pests under control and aerating the soil. And here’s the crunch – they’re a protected species.

So although I celebrate when they commit suicide, my conscience won’t allow me to kill them. Instead, I’ve tried various remedies guaranteed to send them packing by desperate fellow-gardeners. Hearing that moles are very sensitive to smells, I’ve poked all sorts of smelly things into their tunnels. The dog-poo seemed to offend me more than the moles, while the mothballs were unceremoniously pushed right back out again.

I discussed the problem with my friend Binny the other day while we were walking the dogs. “What you need to do,” she said, “is to create a habitat somewhere else in the garden which will attract the moles.” But we couldn’t quite see all the earthworms and juicy grubs congregating in the flower beds. A better option, we finally agreed, might be to attract the moles’ natural enemies.

With moles more likely to exit their tunnels at night in search of insectivorous snacks, it seems that owls may be our best bet. So please, everyone, do your utmost to attract owls to your gardens – especially if you live in the Hout Bay area. We’d really like to give the grass a chance to grow back.

Of Butterflies and Goodwill

Largely brown and yellow, with two colourful eye spots, there’s no mistaking the Christmas butterfly when it flutters by. More often called Citrus Swallowtails, they’re common in gardens during December and January.

But butterflies are like birds: if you want them to breed in your garden, you need the right plants. When we decided to make our garden indigenous, we checked up on what would attract the different species. We learned that other than citrus trees, the Cape chestnut was a good food source for the caterpillars of the Citrus Swallowtail.

So we bought a young sapling at the Kirstenbosch Plant Sale. We read up that we could expect our chestnut to flower after about eight years and so we waited patiently. The deadline came and went, and still we waited. Finally, after ten years, we were rewarded with a few flowers. 

Today I stand at the bottom of our garden and look back at the house. Arching over the roof on the right is a beautiful, strong tree covered in a pale pink flush of flowers. It has lived up to its botanical name, Calodendrum capense – beautiful tree from the cape. Maybe, in all its decoration, it should be called the Christmas tree.

In the meantime, we discovered what to plant in our garden for the caterpillars of other butterflies. We learned that Wild Peach trees are great for Garden Acraeas, those ubiquitous orange creatures with transparent wing tips. Arctotis and gazanias are for Painted Ladies, whose caterpillars are the only ones to spin themselves webs. Plumbago is good for the Common Blues, while carpet geranium, of course, attracts the Geranium Bronze.

Sometimes, the caterpillars do quite a lot of damage to our greenery. But once they’ve metamorphosed into their fragile alter egos, it’s all worthwhile. Often, I stand in front of the beds of scabiosa and Cape forget-me-nots, watching the butterflies flit from flower to flower. I once watched four Citrus Swallowtails put on a magnificent aerial ballet outlined against an azure sky. Well worth a few chomped up lemon trees, I reckon.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m even starting to think that those prolific alien invaders, the European Cabbage Whites, can look rather appealing when dancing above the scabiosa.

Maybe it’s because I’m still basking in festive goodwill. Siegie and I wish you and your families a thrilling 2010, filled with joy, love, life's little essentials – and butterflies.

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.

 

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.