Fools Rush In!
A
A FIELD RANGER had seen a cheetah which appeared to be trapped in an old fenced-off area at the rangers’ camp on the game reserve’s boundary fence. Alth ou ghitw asas tandard barbed-wire stock fence, the cheetah was apparently having difficulty getting out. The section ranger rounded up three of his staff and together they climbed over the fence, hoping to drive the animal out through the open section at the other end – an unusual yet straightforward task, one would have thought. They spread out and walked slowly through the overgrown paddock, shouting as they went.
The outcome was unexpected. An angry leopard sprang onto one of the field rangers. Then, frightened by the response of the other rangers, it quickly jumped off the man and ran through the gap. Fortunately, the hurt man needed only a few stitches to his arm and shoulder. Though the injuries were surprisingly light, they were painful. The ranger who reported a locked-in cheetah received a thorough dressing down from the section ranger and absolute ridicule from his companions.
One night, two men, accompanied by a couple of helpers, drove out to hunt kudu to feed the prospecting camp’s thirty-odd staff. They flushed a herd which ran parallel to the road, but out of sight, so they raced ahead in the Land Rover to get beyond them. The noise of the ‘stampede’ stopped, whereupon the men jumped out with a torch and rifle. After running a short distance, they switched on the light and were greeted by a small herd of buffalo which promptly charged towards them. Switching off the light, the men ran in panic back to the vehicle, jumped in and waited for their galloping hearts to slow down.
However, one man was missing. Gathering their courage, they went to look for the missing man, switching on the torch to check for glowing eyes. The buffalo had apparently moved on. The men called his name, but to no avail. Edging forward, they observed a sapling bent right over with a large object in its branches. Approaching the scene, they saw their missing companion clinging to the upper branches of the small tree, which was now bent double under his weight. Hanging upside down and clinging on for all he was worth, the man’s head was less than a metre off the ground. Unkindly, they hooked two thumbs into his chest and he fell screaming to the ground.
Accustomed to raids by all sorts of two- and four-legged predators, the poultry farmer had built large, high gum-pole enclosures worthy of any zoo’s bird collection. Heavy diamond mesh encircled the structure and the only normal pedestrian way in was via the locked gates. However, marauding dogs and mongooses would tunnel under the wire mesh, human thieves would cut through it, wild and feral cats would go up and over, and large avian predators flew straight in from above. Woken late one night by his guard dogs, the farmer armed himself with his trusty 12-bore double, grabbed his powerful torch and made his way to the chicken runs. Not knowing what manner of intruder it might be, he held the torch in his left hand, sweeping the beam, while gripping his shotgun in his right hand, resting the barrels awkwardly across his bended left arm. His retriever sniffed around him and ran back and forth as the farmer slowly walked between the large structures, shining the torch inside along the ground and pathways. When right next to one of the tall structures, he felt a hard, stinging blow to the side of his head. Staggering sideways, he shone his torch up just in time to see a large caracal (rooikat) run along the top pole, leap to the ground and run off. The injury did not require stitches, but bled profusely as he’d received all four claws to the side of his face. The incident caused a minor sensation in the district; no-one had ever heard of an attack by a caracal.
“They must be bloody big rats,” the police sergeant remarked, adding that the noise was “really causing a problem… sounds like a herd of cattle!” The consensus was that some rat poison should do the trick. The exterminator slid his ladder into the entrance to the ceiling and climbed through, carrying a jar of poisoned pellets. His assistant, the police sergeant, and a couple of others stood at the bottom of the ladder. After a brief exploration, the exterminator let out a scream and came tumbling down the ladder, landing heavily on top of the other men. “Bloody great leguaan!” he raged. “Nearly got me!” He was clearly terrified at the sight of a large Nile monitor in the semi-dark. “Must be two metres long!” They called in the Natal Parks Board who, after a merry dance, hauled out a 1.5-metre leguaan in a sack. Further investigation revealed a large colony of bats in the ceiling – fine food for a hungry leguaan, but how, one wonders, did this large lizard get up there?