The call of the wild: Conclusion

Last week I signed off by writing about sloth poop. At the risk of driving my long-suffering editor to distraction, this week I’m going to begin by talking about a different kind of poop.

We do have wild animals in England, though the most spectacular are found far away from where I live. But in my part of the country we have plenty of birds, especially sea-birds such as cormorants, which are wonderful to see. Oh, and as the sea waters are warming, we get the occasional shark (these are distinctly less welcome).

A few months ago, before I moved to my present accommodation, I made friends with a magpie. These are medium-sized birds, black and white—I seem to remember you have them in Lesotho.

Whenever I sat in the garden I would take a packet of treats for him—bits of biscuit and bread—and he would come close up to my chair on the lawn and chatter to me while I fed him. He was either elderly or had been in a fight, because the feathers on his head stuck out in different directions.

I entertained him by reciting, in a soft, friendly voice, from the work of Logan February, the Nigerian poet I was writing a conference paper on (my work went with me even into the garden). After a few of these sessions he plucked up the courage to fly up and sit on my knee and take his snacks from my hand.

I rather hoped he might, with his beak, indicate from the book which was his favourite Logan poem. That didn’t happen, but once he suddenly took off and landed on the lawn a few feet away from me. Then he dropped a substantial poop and flew back to my knee; it seemed he hadn’t wanted to soil my trousers.

“Good boy,” I said. And then “Daalu” (that’s Igbo for “thank you”; I suspect he didn’t understand Sesotho).

My last anecdote stems from Lesotho. I would sometimes go for a drink (or three) to Khotsong Lodge, near Thaba Bosiu, and sit near the swimming-pool, hoping to see animals (the Lodge functions as a small wildlife park). Once I went there with my cat, who enjoyed outings by car and was very well-behaved.

So there we were at Khotsong, me, my faithful taxi driver, and my cat. I had fish treats for the latter and bought the driver just a couple of cans of lager (cos he was driving). The cat had a wee sip of my brandy, which left him looking puzzled.

I had been apprehensive that the cat might confront an ostrich and come out badly (ostriches can eviscerate a grown man with a single blow of the foot, which is why in the Free State they are kept on farms as guards), but this didn’t happen.

At one point a zebra trotted into the enclosure and started munching grass. My cat’s eyes went as big as saucers. I could read his thoughts: “I’ve seen horses. I’ve seen donkeys. But what the heck is that?”

Then a rock dassie appeared and raced over to me from his burrow. He recognised me, because I always brought him treats. He sat on the bench on one side of me, my cat on the other, and from time to time I gave one or the other a treat, taking care not to muddle the bags.

My cat was unhappy that my affections were divided and made little complaining noises. After a bit, though, the two decided they’d better be friends. Simultaneously, with no obvious stimulus, they leant forward across my knees and touched noses.

Chris Dunton