Category Archives: Home

Executive Summary

Tom and I were off to the Palmiet. Mom and Jess were out, so I asked Tom to leave them a note so they’d know wassup when they got back. Sure thing Dad!

I see it on my way out. It says “we have gone.”

I say, Tom, tell them a bit more than that, my fella. Sure thing, Dad! And we trundle off to go fossicking:

When we get back, there it is on the kitchen table, complete with the seven year old’s additional information:

Tom’s note to Mom for our trip to the Palmiet:
We have gone and we well come back – Tom Tom

Jessie Rescue Act II

Once again Jessie rescued some creatures, this time frogs from the pool. Bush squeakers Arthroleptis wahlbergi, a small one and a tiny one. Why they didn’t hop onto or cling to my rafts I have in the pool I don’t know. I assume quite a few creatures do use the rescue rafts and then hop out without us seeing them. Hope so.

Bush Squeaker Arthroleptis wahlbergi (1)

The small one was about tip-of-my-pinky size – adult size for this squeaker – the tiny one about 9mm from tip of nose to tail. The bottom middle pic in the collage is the only one of the tiny chap.

Here’s the intrepid rescuer with her friend Lydia from London:

Hluhlu with Lydia 19May2018 (4).jpg

Arthroleptis wahlbergii, the bush squeaker

Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forest, subtropical or tropical moist shrubland, plantation edges, rural gardens, urban areas, and heavily degraded former forest. It is found mostly in leaf-litter and rotting vegetation.

The eggs are laid in damp leaf-litter where the young hatch as miniature frogs. The call is a high-pitched squeak, usually emitted during wet weather, which is often mistaken for the calls of crickets.

It is threatened by habitat loss, so please don’t mow your lawns right to the edge and please don’t rake up your leaf-litter! Leave as much of your garden wild and undisturbed as you can. Please. Asb.

~~oo0oo~~

Durban Nightlife

Nightjars are fascinating birds.

One night in my first own home, Whittington Court in Marriott Road on Durban’s Berea, I heard a strange sound. It was like a small dog barking, but not quite that and I remembered from all my reading and re-reading of Roberts and Newmans bird books: Nightjar!

Aitch! I shouted, a nightjar! Luckily she knew I was weird so she joined me and we peered out from our first floor window and a nightjar flitted past. I was over the moon with excitement and discovery. A Freckled Nightjar right outside my flat!

Investigation revealed it to be a well-known one, roosting on the roof of the residential hotel nearby. Eden Gardens, now a retirement home. It had been discovered by Philip Clancey, famous birder and splitter and Durban Natural Science Museum ornithologist and author and artist, who lived in the hotel. They usually roost on rocks and the roof was a good substitute. Their camouflage is impressive:

Freckled Nightjar_africanbirdclub
– looking like a stone – africanbirdclub.com

A previous “discovery” of a nightjar also had me hugely excited.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Durban museum ornithologist Philip Clancey took numerous expeditions into Zululand and Mozambique, discovering several new subspecies as well as one new species to science, the Lemon-breasted Canary in 1961. Clancey was a prodigious publisher of papers and books including “Birds of Natal and Zululand”, all lavishly illustrated with his excellent and distinctive bird paintings.

~~~oo0oo~~~

thanks stellenboschbirds.com – Chris Krog for Freckled Nightjar Caprimulgus tristigma pic

Mini Migration

This morning on my stoep there was a bewilderbeast migration across the plains. In miniature.

20180304_070449[1].jpg

As time passed they grew in numbers. They trudged across the barren surface seeking water and new grazing. I decided to follow the migration.

Soon they found grazing and drink in the form of dog food and spilt cooldrink, Sambucca and my teenagers being their generous suppliers.

I flew low over the cooldrink waterhole.

Mini_Bewilderbeasts[1].jpg

In these waterholes lurk mini-crocodiles, ready to pounce and have them some mini-wildebeast beef. Probably. I’m guessing.

Maybe I should set up a webcam?

~~oo0oo~~

stoep – veranda; patio; porch

Sambucca – fierce guard-Labrador; part greyhound for a brief minute once a day when I get home; Here seen on her way to the gallows (or a hairbrush and de-ticking)

Sambucca to the gallows (3)

Ignorance is Bliss

maybe – but could have been agony.

snake for nick ID (2)

Found this tiny snake in my pool weir. Immediately set off to find my net – I have a dark little net they often just crawl into for refuge, making catching them easy. I very seldom handle a snake. Besides caution, I really don’t want to injure them. Also, I suspected this one may have been injured. Dropped into the pool by a kingfisher maybe, I was thinking.

But – frustration and disorganisation – I couldn’t find my net or anything else to scoop it up with, and the bowl I wanted to use to take pictures in didn’t fit into the weir. So – convinced it was some kind of worm snake – I reached in and lifted it gently and placed it in the bowl.

Took pics and sent them to Nick Evans, Westville’s herpetologist extraordinaire.

Nick_and_Stiletto[1]

Ooh!  Confession time: Actually Nick, I did handle it!

So then he sent this:

Nick_n_Stiletto_bite[1]

Weirdly, I had read up on the stiletto snake this very week and noted that: “This snake cannot be held safely and you will, in all likelihood, get bitten if you attempt to hold one.”

But at average length 40cm and the fact that the stiletto “is an irascible snake that bites readily” and my little snake was so docile, I “knew” my snake was harmless!

Lesson learnt!

Stiletto snake Marais

Here can be seen how the stiletto snake can bend its neck and how a tiny side-swipe could allow a fang to prick you. Thanks Johan Marais (see his site and here).

Stiletto snake Marais_fangs
thanks Johan Marais

~~~oo0oo~~~

postscript: When Tommy read this he grin-snorted: “Very caucasian to be handling a venomous snake, Dad. Very caucasian.”

Steve Reed: That oke is a hoot! Sensahuma second to none.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Another stiletto-ignorant fella wasn’t so lucky:

– with thanks to Johan Marais’ very informative newsletters –

Surviving Off The Grid – The Essentials

So we have no electricity and its getting dark and the kids are all over me, outraged!

Dad! There’s no electricity!

Yes, I say, I can see that.

Why!? they ask.

Uh, mumble mumble, payment mumble, I mumble.

Soon I have to confess: I paid late and we got cut off. Now there’s a re-connection fee I have to pay and a delay. I’m thinking fridge, freezer, supper tonight but they have far more urgent and greater disasters and catastrophes in mind:

“THERE’S NO WIFI!!” they scream in unison.

Now they’re ganging up on me. “In unison” and “Jess & Tom” are not usually linked phrases.

Well, I’m walking to the shops, I say, thinking charcoal, firelighter, matches, candles. Do you need anything? Their voices go up two octaves as they shout as one:

“AIRTIME!!”

=======ooo000ooo=======

Lasted four days. It was cool. Very instructive. Gas cooker and candles. Cleared out the fridge and deep freeze. AND – they survived!

(I had paid on the due date but had ignored this little instruction “Rx is due immediately, the rest can be paid on the due date”).

 

African Greybeard

I’m coming down to Durban to buy a parrot. Where’s Overport? asks the ole man. Parrots can live for eighty years, so what better to get as a pet when you’re ninety five in the shade yourself?

Then the ole lady phones, all worried – as ever. Can you tell us how to get to West Road in Overport, Koosie? I say I’ll try, I’ll look it up, I’ll phone you back. I need to hatch a plot. I phone back and say, Come to my place for lunch, I’ll leave work early and I’ll take you, it’s not easy to find. She sounds dubious but she’ll try that.

She phones back, amazed. He saw sense. We’re coming for lunch, she says, relieved. A rare visit to the son’s home! She can’t see, he can’t hear, so she was dreading looking for a small parrot in a strange haystack, driving by feel and touch, with a driver very disinclined to listen to anything she has to say, and quick to blame.

When I get home they’re on my stoep and Jess has given them tea and Tommy is busy cooking lunch for everybody – pasta carbonara. My children! Bless them! I had told them, I’d love it if you’d give them a polite hello, but you needn’t stay, just make your excuses and go. They decided to completely exceed all expectations and charm the old bullets, the granma that loves them and the old goat who denies them. Proud of ’em!

Off we go to meet Sumie who has three baby African Grey Parrots in a box. His grandfather breeds them in Utrecht. The old man had asked Sumie to choose his own from the three. He checks them out on the tailgate of my bakkie in West Road Overport, picks one and now I think, Here comes the bargaining.

R2500, says Sumie. No way, says the ole man and shuffles off to the front seat of my bakkie. He comes back slowly on the uneven pavement with the bird magazine in his hand, stabbing his finger at Sumie’s ad: R2300; He gives a pained moaning, Now I have wasted my time coming all the way from Pietermaritzburg. Sumie says to me, ‘I thought I wrote R2500!‘ To the customer he says, Fine, Uncle Pieter, R2300.

And the food for free, says the ole man. That cost me R100, Uncle Pieter, I’ve just fed them, so give me R80, says Sumie. It’s my birthday on Friday (true), counters the ole man, You should give it to me as a gift. How old you’ll be? asks Sumie. Ninety Five says the ole man. So they settle on R50.

Now they debate whose box is better. Sumie has a shoebox – it’s wider. Ole man has a box some electronics came in – it’s deeper. Ole man realises if he takes Sumie’s box he gets both, so he settles on Sumie’s shoebox.

We go back home to eat chef Tom’s delicious pasta lunch, followed by ice cream and coffee, and off they go back to Maritzburg. The ole man changes into second too soon up the steep hill, has to stop and start over. He would have hated it that I heard that.

~~oo0oo~~

And I didn’t take a single photo! The parrot pic is off the internet. Damn! Well, here they are with great-grandkids:

Gogo Mary & Great_Grandkids (2)

And I just thought: When last did I post a recent pic of my favourite children? Here they are willingly posing for me:

Pests!

~~oo0oo~~

Sakkie Sakkie Music Heard in Westville?

I can’t believe it! What’s that noise? In My Own House!

On our sea cruise to Mocambique a song was played over and over ad infinitum. It got people crowding the dance floor and forming swaying lines of bodies on the boat and on the beach. It was Hamba Nawe and Jess loved it.

But Jess had found an Afrikaans version, so now my house was sounding like a Steve Hofmeyr shrine. I was aghast. I thought “This Cannot Be!” . . . BUT: I remembered what dear old Mom had done and said when I played Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love full tilt in her house in the Free State back in the seventies: Nothing.

So I was a diplomat. A long-suffering diplomat. I mean, if my Mom could listen to a shrill I’m Gonna Give You Every Inch Of My Love! in the Vrystaat in the seventies, I could chill, surely?

~~oo0oo~~

Teenagers!

Pleez pleez Dad! I haven’t seen her for AGES! (yeah, like one week). OK, I’ll fetch her Friday on the way home from work. I enjoy that back route anyway. Instead of taking the N2 national highway then onto the N3 national highway at Spaghetti Junction and home, this route takes me through Yellowwood Park with its dark avenues of huge old yellowwood trees planted around 1885 by Dering Stainbank the sugar baron (don’t take my history at face value, but it’s something like that).

On past the Stainbank nature reserve, over the one-way bridge across the Umhlatuzana River, through the narrow tunnel under the railway line, through the cement factory that Mike Doyle used to run. Up into Bellair past the driveway lined by an avenue of huge palm trees that dwarf the house, past the impressive Albert Luthuli hospital, across the Mkombaan River and into Chesterville at the big shisanyama and beer hall. Andile is waiting outside her home, she hops in and we drive past the Pavilion shopping centre and into Westville and home.

The two girls whoop and give each other a big hello and a hug. Then Andile promptly disappears into the bedroom and Jess into the lounge and they don’t see or speak to each other till suppertime! Of course they may have been busily engaged with each other and a dozen friends on their social media, for all I know. Wifi, after all.

Teenagers!

 

An earlier pic of them one Easter.