Encounters With Animals

By Robert Milne

As a youngster I was fortunate enough to sometimes spend the winter holidays with family in the Karoo, either in the small town or out on the farm at the foot of the majestic Swartberg Mountains. In those days life moved in a different way, without the distractions of TV or IT and of an evening round the fireside or the kitchen table, one of the main pastimes was story-telling. From this early beginning I developed a love for the subtle art of relating a good story and a passion to one day contribute in some way. I have since over the years told many a tale myself round the fireside, leading eventually to my writing of short stories, some of which are contained in this volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Milne
• Release date: Nov 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9780620714426

Book preview

Encounters

With

Animals

Collected Short Stories

ROBERT MILNE

Copyright © 2016 Robert Milne

Published by Robert Milne Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Author using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Printed and bound by Mega Digital Printers

Edited by Bronwen Bickerton for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Hadeda Hassles

Squirrels in Suburbia

Tomcat Trouble

Cats and Tortoises

Fish and Cows

Toads and Birds of Prey

Dogs and Neighbours

Genet Cat Calling Card

Farmers and Leopards

Snakes and Brokers

Elephant Encounters

Horse Wallop

Snakes and Guests

Catfishing

A Galjoen, a Storm and a Rainbow Nation

Cows and Camping

Sausage Dog

Flat Dogs and Fish Eagles

Wild Coast Creatures, Farmers and Noises in the Night

Author’s note

Hadeda Hassles

I love animals. Perhaps they sense this, which fortunately allows me an affinity with them in many situations. This also engenders an understanding of animals which often, it seems to me, is a little different to that of many of my fellow human beings.

There are however one or two exceptions, where some sort of primal irritation comes into play; a bit like certain humans who have an obnoxious aura about them. The hadeda ibis falls into this category. Years ago I loved them. As a child, every year in June, I was fortunate enough to go on holiday with my family to the Wild Coast where I encountered them for the first time.

For years I only encountered them north of East London, many miles from my home in Cape Town. This was wonderful as their raucous noise then symbolised splendid holidays in the sun; the call of the hadeda, the pristinely beautiful Wild Coast, nostalgia, youth and carefree happiness. Then, somewhere over the years, they moved south to Cape Town. Lots of them. Now they are everywhere and a noisesome intrusion of my sleep and limited spare time, on a par with my neighbour’s dog. I call them vuvuzela birds for obvious reasons or shotgun birds, more in keeping with what I sometimes wish to visit upon them.

Where I was living a few years ago, the neighbour at the back of my house had a large pine tree on his property, the branches of which overhung my property, very near my bedroom window. I hope you are starting to get the picture. A pair of these harpies from hell decided these branches were the perfect roost. No problem, ’til 5am on a spring morning when, as a pair, they felt obliged to exercise their lungs.

First one then its mate would emit its awful cry, at enormous volume, in the pristine silence of the early morning air. Only to be answered a few seconds later by the pair down the road, whereupon they felt obliged to shout back. It seemed like some sort of territory-marking exercise, like an avian version of the howler monkey, but more like a berserk burglar alarm going off every 15 seconds. Sleep became a forlorn hope, unless I staggered outside and chased them away with invective or missile. It’s strange, and I think also confirmation hadedas are some sort of evil incarnation, that my docile Labrador dog hated them even more than I do and did so long before I did. He is the most loving of creatures and adores other animals, including even the cat.

I must however put this in context. I am not a morning person. In fact I distinctly distrust people who are cheerful in the morning. Get a life. They obviously don’t enjoy themselves, don’t drink nearly enough, go to bed way to early and get up even earlier just to annoy people like me.

I plan for this weakness of mine and put out my clothes and anything else I may need, all ready the night before so in the morning I can, like an automaton without putting on a light, get up, shower, dress and leave for work. This also avoids the embarrassing situation of arriving at work with different colour socks or other clothing that clearly does not match. I am not great company before 9am on a weekend, so why would I be nice to anyone before this time on a weekday? I am a civilised person after all. Even my dogs don’t get up in the morning until there is a reason, like the delivery of their breakfast. Otherwise they barely stir as I leave in the morning. Perhaps all this sleeping while I go to work has something to do with my cheerfulness? Thus the hadedas were squawking on very dangerous ground, as another neighbour can testify with regards to my eloquence and volume of delivery when his dog used to wake me up at a similar time.

Anyway, this constant early-morning cacophony was starting to negatively impact my life to such a degree I was desperate to find a solution. Eventually it came to me, like a squawk in the dark, deliciously evil in its simplicity. I realised the hadedas settled down to roost at sunset, amid much shouting to their neighbours, but at about 8pm in the evening I am a lot mellower and barely noticed it. Before I went to bed at night, I could sneak out and chase them off their roost, thus hopefully they would go elsewhere for the night and in the morning, disturb some other poor sod from his slumber.

So, the next evening, at about 11pm, out I went into the backyard, armed with torch and invective. There they were, the pair of them, perched on their branch and to my disgust, despite my best efforts, they simply peered at me blearily but refused to budge. A missile or two didn’t help, except to clatter on the roof of my neighbour, who I am sure already had the number of the men in white coats close at hand in case the guy next door got out of hand again. So I had to desist, as my aim was poor. What now? Then it came to me, another cunning plan in my moment of need. I needed to somehow get closer to them. A long pole or something? Of course, the swimming pool scoop-net pole.

It was way too long for the pool and I always got it caught up in the pepper tree when trying to use it, thus spilling the leaves back into the pool, accompanied by the usual evil words to both scoop and tree and anyone else annoying me I could lay the blame on. For once its extra length would be useful. I nipped round the house and grabbed it, got tangled in the pepper tree with usual loud swearing and pepper tree leaves ending up in the pool, then headed back to the hadeda perch. Suddenly an even better plan dawned on me. Pure vengeful genius. The pool scoop pipe was a massive vuvuzela, was it not? I sneaked up on the bleary-eyed cretins, placed the one end of the long scoop-net pole inches below them, the other end to my lips, and gave my best hadeda imitation into my end of the pipe with all the lung power I could muster.

Chaos and hadeda panic ensued. They lifted about three feet off their roost in fright, feathers everywhere and took off, squawk, squawk, etc. Childish, unbelievable vindictive euphoria enveloped me. All those mornings of broken sleep! Revenge truly is sweet. I would not have blamed my neighbour for calling the police if he had chanced to see me dancing round the garden shouting, Yes, yes, yes, waving the pool scoop wildly in the air accompanied by my dogs cavorting and barking in sympathy.

A few more doses of this treatment and the hadedas decided to roost as far as possible from that noisy ground-dwelling hadeda with no respect for sleeping hours. I was almost disappointed the fun was over.

Squirrels in Suburbia

Having seen off the hadedas in style, I turned my attention to the other major pest in my garden, squirrels. Cute furry creatures? No. Rats with good PR or simply vermin? Yes. Aliens introduced by unthinking colonialists with hugely detrimental consequences? Yes again.

Fortunately they are mainly restricted to certain parts of Cape Town and thus their damage to the environment is to some extent limited. I am deadly serious when I refer to their damage to the local fauna and flora. Being rodents, they are thus omnivores and will eat almost anything, especially when in extremus.

Not far away from where I used to live were several large pine plantations where there were a number of squirrels. The odd squirrel was seen in my neighbourhood but they were kept in check naturally by the food supply and predators like harrier hawks and thus tended to stick to the forest. Their negative effect on other creatures and plant life in the neighbourhood was therefore tolerable. Unfortunately some idiots in the area, as happens the world over, started feeding them. Cute, cute have food. Morons!

Being rodents, they will breed and reproduce in line with the food supply. Don’t believe me? Go see the movie ‘Benn’. Yes, the one where Michael Jackson sang the theme song. In the days when he still looked similar to the way he was born.

The net result was a squirrel population explosion. We soon had swarms of them. If you left the front door open they were there begging. Fleas, lice, etc. were part of the accompanying problem. Then came winter. The people feeding them of course lost interest and forgot about them as the weather deteriorated. Result: lots of starving squirrels compounded by the fact there were not enough trees and nests for them to spend the winter in.

Every square inch of my lawn and flowerbeds had been dug up in a desperate search for food. Every flowerpot was emptied in search of bulbs. Trees were also destroyed as the bark was ripped off by the squirrels to get at the soft underside in their desperate search for nourishment. Every nook and cranny had been stuffed with peanuts horded from the summer. Many a nasty fight ensued over this dwindling supply. Most of the peanuts had of course sprouted or rotted by then and were thus pretty useless as food.

Squirrels invaded every space, especially in the roof, desperately looking for a warm nest, as there were far too few available to cope with their numbers. More fleas, lice, etc. I had to buy huge rolls of chicken wire to block every possible entrance into my roof. Once again sleep was disturbed with desperate squirrels fighting for space in the roof and running about above the ceiling. I had to fumigate to rid the roof and ceiling of the accompanying vermin.

Spring was even more tragic as emaciated, starving squirrels, those that had survived that is, raided every bird’s nest. My beautiful willow tree was no more and my garden was left devoid of bird life. A plague on stupid neighbours who blindly mess with nature to appease their own gratification and are then oblivious to the consequences. My garden looked like the Battle of the Somme, and had a similar quantity of lice, fleas and other vermin. Once again I needed a plan.

My most simple plan was no good as I could not really carry out the obvious culling solution. I therefore needed something with a bit more invention. By this stage, in order to protect hearth, home and garden, I had copious amounts of chicken wire in every access point into the roof. I also had a metre-and-a-half-high wire fence around the herb garden and I had a chicken coop-type structure around my pot plants. The Siegfried Line had nothing on me.

Eventually I read in the local rag about a guy in the area who had experienced the same problem with squirrels. He had built a squirrel trap, caught them and relocated them to the forest. Humane and practical.

The forest had lots of pine trees thus food, shelter and also predators to ensure a natural balance in the squirrel population. This however was easier said than done when I decided to try my hand at this capture-and-release story. I had plenty of materials at hand in the form of wood and chicken wire from all my previous barricading, so I easily built a small cage with a hinged door. My first attempts however at an automatic spring-loaded trap mechanism were a failure. All I did was feed the squirrels, which was the last thing I wanted to do. Aside that is from the usual colourful language and cursing of anything I could find to take the blame for my lack of success. What I needed was a plan with cunning simplicity, more in line with my limited backwoods skills. Watching Survival TV programmes doesn’t really help.

I used the same cage but, as a trap mechanism I attached two stretchies from hinged door to side panels as my spring load. The trigger was a simple stick to wedge the door open against the tension of the expanded stretchies. I then tied a long rope to the stick. It was a straight copy from the cartoons, where the tramp tries to catch pigeons in the park, using a cardboard box propped up at one end on a stick, with a long string and some breadcrumbs