The Yellow Mongoose: Fires and Fence Attacks

Well, today has not been a good day. It is the end of the month pay day weekend, so that always seems to spell chaos, mainly because every farm worker from here to Zimbabwe is completely pissed. The day started off so well, but went badly wrong when I tried to hold Caste the goat so that her baby Mia could drink. For some reason Caste will let the boy baby goat Zecko drink but not Mia, so we have to hold her. So off I went to try and do this on my own. Little did I know how strong that damn goat is. I reached out to steady myself when I lost footing and my hand slammed down on the barbed fencing. Feeling the wire puncture the muscle made me feel sick. I just wandered up to Aly and went "Aly,this happened". I screamed like a little girl when she tried to clean it with antiseptic. And it was not my proudest moment either when Aly had to tell the two young girls, LaLa and Zeta, who had come for a trail ride, to hold down her 23 year old volunteer as I screeched and squirmed.

My punctured hand.

The barbed wire I sliced into......elegant as always

Bandaged up for riding. Let it never be said that I dont let the show go on!

The trail ride went off without a hitch and I saw another baby calf to make up for the one I didn't get to photograph yesterday.

Luckily, we got back from the ride before we got a call saying that had a fire had been started, most likely by someone drunk or doing it for fun. This weekend is the most dangerous of the entire year, marked on all the farmers calendars. It is the driest month there is, and if you mix alcohol with it, then you have trouble. The fire raged all through the forest in which we ride and came right up to the guest cottages. The heat was insane, and it spread so fast. At one point we thought the fire had jumped the road into the horses field but thankfully it didn't. A neighbor of Alys, called Johan had been out fighting fires since 2am this morning, and from the sound of things, he is still at it now. Absolute madness! Thankfully no animals we burnt, well, domestic animals anyway, as far as the birds of prey were concerned, today was their personal braai day, feasting off the burnt animals who couldnt escape fast enough.....