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.
Ooh! Confession time: Actually Nick, I did handle it!
So then he sent this:
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!
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).
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 –
Turning into Jan Hofmeyr road today I saw the brightest rainbow I have seen in all my life, which is a long, long time. The picture is washed out – it was seriaas bright and richly-coloured – quite spectacular! The ‘shadow’ rainbow to the left (it was a double ‘bow) was as bright as a usual rainbow. Ah swear!
And it ended right in our garden!
I hurried home and started digging where I had seen it hit the ground –
Quietly sipping tea on my patio today I spot a Grey-headed Bush Shrike – a first for the garden. I’ve been hearing him, but today’s the first glimpse in the garden.
Also a boubou, puffback, golden-tailed woodpecker, hadeda, yellowbilled kite, white eye, olive sunbird, yellow-breasted apalis, spectacled weaver, yellow-fronted canary & fledgling; black flycatcher & fledgling; purple-crested touraco, hlekabafazi (the woodhoopoe); toppie bulbul, tawny-flanked prinia, white-eared barbet, yellow-rumped tinker, red-eyed dove, red-winged starling and a fork-tailed drongo.
Earlier I’d received a call from a Westville estate agent. Wanna sell? You’ve been in that house eleven years. Nah thanks, I’m going to die here, I told her.
First puppy. That was TC whose name didn’t signify much but we couldn’t think of another and settled on TC which teasingly was for “Terrible Canine” or “Terrific Canine”. Maybe the character from the TV show Magnum P.I influenced the name too. She was born on Melrose Farm of Mouse the Jack Russell by that he-man and character Stan the dark Staffie and was a gift from Dave and Goldie Hill, new parents of Tatum at the time. This was December 1988.
Stan with Goldie; Mouse with Tatum:
– dogs aren’t allowed on the bed at 7 River Drive – much . .
TC with her siblings before weaning:
We still lived in a flat but were moving into a house soon. Flat life suited TC:
– Top Dog surveys her domain –
But so did the great outdoors:
And even though three younger new arrivals outgrew her . . .
She outlasted two of them and remained Top Dog:
Her big friend and sparring partner was Tess the bull terrier from next door. Great mates they were, but occasionally when we near they’d go at each other with much snarling and hound-dog insults.
Once I held Tess high overhead with TC attached to her leg in a firm bite, both growling furiously, then dumped them in the deep end of the pool before they would quit their nonsense!
TC lived to fifteen, outliving Matt and Bogart. She is buried at 7 River Drive Westville on the banks of the Mkombaan river under a kanniedood tree, the paperbark commiphora (was Commiphora harveyi). She just got old and tired and slower and thin, and died quietly in her basket one evening.
So here we go: It’s January. A new year and a new school for Tom. High school.
He sure looks swish in his new tie and blazer and sleeveless jersey. He is so looking forward to this new school even though he hates the grade eight compulsory short pants! Long pants are from grade nine.
I bid him farewell and he sets off up the road. Years of doing the carpool lift to school have come to an end.
Eleven Years after Aitch decided we had to move out of River Drive, Tom walks to school.
Just as Aitch had planned. *
300m as the crow flies, 500m on foot including a detour through the shopping centre!
~~~oo0oo~~~
* In 2003 Aitch said to me on the driveway at 7 River Drive, “We must sell up here and move.” I said, What? No, I’m going to die here. Right here in River Drive, on the left bank of the Mkombaan river.
“No you’re not,” she said, “We have to move.”
Why? I asked, already feeling myself conceding defeat to the resident estate agent. I knew she’d have a good reason.
“We’re out of the school catchment zone,” she said. Which school catchment zone? I asked, puzzled. “Westville Boys High,” she said. What’s that got to do with us? I asked, faintly. “I want Tom to go to WBHS,” said she who knows things.
But he’s only TWO! I said, sensing victory.
“I know,” she said, delivering the coup de grace. We moved.
Tom and I butted heads today. I decided to take time out and disappear for a quiet hour in a nature reserve. Just as I was about to leave Tom snuck into the back seat and lay down. On the way and the whole time there he slept.
I wandered around, staying near the bakkie, birding and snapping pics.
~~~oo0oo~~~
– roosfontein nature reserve in westville –
When we got home two hours later, he woke up and gave me a huge hug.
Geoffrey Caruth is a doer. He gets going. He has run an indigenous nursery in an industrial area for decades, he ran an Olde Heritage Shoppe for years, he built a pond in a park – as a donation to the people of Westville; he has a lovely young (much younger!) wife and two ugly old dogs. He lives on the bank of the Palmiet river, on the boundary of the Palmiet Nature Reserve. Sure, he thinks that to be an Englishman is to have won the lottery in life, but hey, even he’s not perfect.
Recently he decided to re-introduce bushbuck into the 100ha Palmiet Nature Reserve in Westville, KwaZulu Natal and – typically – got off his butt. I would have talked about it, he rallied the troops. The bushbuck or imbabala (Tragelaphus sylvaticus) should be eminently suited to our valley and we hope they’ll thrive here.
So this week, 18 months after he decided to launch “Operation Nkonka”, we were in the Palmiet watching five beautiful bushbuck, three females and two males, jump out of the back of the truck and explore their new home.
Geoff and Warren Friedman watch with pride and angst:
A = Release site
B = Where I last saw a bushbuck
C = Our home
Later four more were released. Soon we’ll be fawning over their offspring, we hope!
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
nkonka is isiZulu for male bushbuck;
bushbuck in general are imbabala; the Cape bushbuck is our species; the other is the Harnessed bushbuck or kéwel, a different species in west and central Africa. Convergent evolution has them looking very similar but ours is closely related to the Bongo and the Sitatunga while the Harnessed is closer to the Nyala. The Nyala has the wonderful Latin name Tragelaphus angasi – you can imagine how that came about! (angazi in isiZulu can mean ‘I don’t know’).
“We’re watching the Comrades Marathon out on the road again tomorrow!” I announce to the gang. My house is infested with five know-it-alls. We’ll get up at about 5.30 and be there by 6. The route is about 600m up the road and we like to watch the ‘up’ run if we’re home.
Aaw, Dad, can’t we watch on TV? It’s much better graphics, says the lazy one.
Here comes the sun . . and the helicopter:
Grumble, grumble! But then the first runners arrived! And now they’re into it: My five cheer every runner.
They loved it. Especially breakfast afterwards. Thanks Dad!
What an interesting cul-de-sac is Elston Place. Sure there are three boring houses with closed gates and aloof umLungus in them, and one high-wall 8-unit complex called Marula-something with faceless people living in it who don’t know that if you live in a ten-gate cul-de-sac you GREET everyone who lives there. They’re at the top of the road so maybe they don’t even know its a short little cul-de-sac?
BUT:
We also have a house with two young kids and good people who will host the neighbourhood kids in their pool; They have direct access to the nature reserve;
Then there are the four run-down council houses with hordes of kids. THAT’s what makes Elston Place interesting. Those that visit me to swim and snack range from three to thirteen, Fezile, Asanda, Katelo, Khanyiso, Michael, Mfundi, Logical & Paul – boys. Andile, Azokuhle, Gugu & Minenhle – girls. Who exactly they belong to, I have not fully worked out. But my kids know, and shake their heads when I ask – again.
Some of the older ones have moved up and on. They’re too cool for our pool, trampoline and jungle gym now. One of them has had a bambino already. Kids with kids. I fright for that.
Some – thank goodness – never grow up!
– my first ‘grandchild’ – Logical’s baby –
One house is childless. Occupied by Bill G, ex-Durban Corpse municipal employee who knows everything, especially about how grass and verges should be cut – and specialising in kids’ education (“You must study hard, y’hear? My daughter didn’t play in the street and look today there she is, a doctor. My son didn’t play in the street and there he is, a pharmacist!”). We’ve never seen his kids, so I spose he’s right about that much.
One Mom is Thandi, who works at Woolies and goes to Virgin Active Gym every day, walking her ample bum 3km’s there and 3km’s back, even tho there’s a gym in our nearby centre that she works in – I guess Woolies has her on Discovery Health.
One has a green car and drives her kids to school at Westville Jr Primary every morning. Her kids don’t visit or play in the road.
Lawrence the friendly and polite Zimbabwean worked at Nourish Cafe nearby, but they closed, so now he walks to a far-away newly-opened PicknPay near Thandi’s gym. He has a wife and a little daughter.
We have Naseem from Pakistan with dogs that bark right in my ear when I’m in my bedroom and vehicles that arrive and leave at all times of the day & night. Lovely people, but sometimes I phone them at 3am and ask them ‘Please SHUT UP your dogs.’
And then Deo was our Metro cop. It was good to have a Metro cop vehicle in our road with his smiling face in it. Lately he’d been scarce and I heard whispers of a mistress or two and shenanigans. Now he’s late. Car accident.
I thought he’d been hit in the blue & white Metro car by a truck, but his widow Nkosazana came round yesterday dressed all in black top-to-toe including scarf and hat. She needed me to update her CV so she can look for another job as she was recently retrenched from the security company where she was a CCTV operator. Bliksem. Three kids. Around 19, 16 and 13.
She filled me in on the details: He was driving his private Nissan X-Trail and hit (or was hit by) a Toyota Hilux bakkie. Neither he nor his mistress were badly hurt, but he “wasn’t right” and was sent back to Westville hospital after a while, then on to Entabeni as his condition worsened. There he died and poor Nkosazana (who he’d ‘kicked out’ in October) was only then able to get into their home to try and sort things out. Mistress in the meantime had the house keys and took documents, cellphones, watches and stuff. Luckily his Metro cop colleagues believed her when she explained her plight and took her around to the mistress’ place and got some of their stuff back.
Elston Place also borders the beautiful Palmiet Nature Reserve, and the day before yesterday I saw a new bird at my bird bath: A Yellow-bellied Greenbul.
Lotsa rain in Tegween (eThekwini, Durban). The garden looks like a series of lakes and the pool is overflowing. I had asked Tobias to fill it up just before the rains started, so I’ve actually paid for some of the water flowing out over the lawn! Luckily I have a bakkie now, so I shouldn’t get stuck. If it carries on I’ll be wishing I’d bought a 4X4. Thanks to the new patio roof and a flat roof over the new scullery we have the sound of rain on a tin roof again. Haven’t had that since Vrystaat days. I love it. Music to my ears!
Finally extracted me digit and have started some DIY stuff at last. Bookshelves, mainly – to act as a room divider to shut off the guest loo from direct view! Tobias has been a big help, working in the cottage as it’s too wet to do any gardening.
Now I must get round to fitting a new geyser – OK, having one fitted. Been without hot water in the house for three months (we have hot water both in Cecelia’s room and in the cottage, though). I reckon I’d have got it in the ear after three DAYS if Aitch had been around! Three HOURS maybe!
When the kids moan I just assure them it’s character-building to carry hot water from outside to the washbasin, and to go out to the cottage to shower, towel over your shoulder.
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