ANIMAL ANTICS

From tool-using goats and brilliant baboons to big, angry bulls, animals can amuse, amaze and sometimes scare us. A number of people related their favorite animal stories to Glennis Kriel.

- Glenneis Kriel

Farmers often have interesting stories about the things animals get up to on their farms. In the Klein Karoo, there’s an old story about a farmer who came across an ostrich with its head hanging upside down. Inspecting the bird, he could find nothing wrong, so he went off to feed the rest of the flock, hoping the ostrich would recover on its own.

On his return, however, the ostrich still had its head hanging to the ground. Not knowing what else to do, he bent the bird’s neck back up. With the world right side up again, the bird ran away as if nothing had happened.

“I guess it just forgot which way was up,” the farmer said afterward.

There are many accounts of strange animal interactions with electric wires. On a Karoo farm, a warthog was often seen ‘preparing’ to storm its way through the electric fence surrounding the vegetable land. The animal would apparently sit down and breathe heavily through his nose, almost like a bull getting ready to make the charge, for up to a quarter of an hour before rushing up to the fence.

Allegedly, there was once a leader of a troop of mischievous baboons in the Baviaanskloof that behaved in a similar way. One of the troop’s favourite spots was a telecommunications site on Aasvoëlberg. The site was protected by an electric security fence, so the alpha male would always test whether it was live before the troop entered the site.

Apparently reluctant to face the ordeal, the big baboon would shuffle backwards towards the wire. Once there, he would hold his head in his paws, while reaching back to the wire several times with his leg until he had built up enough courage to touch the wire.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANTAGE