Animal encounters
on Thea's Blog (Uganda), 25/Aug/2009 09:12, 34 days ago
Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}There is this insane brown bird the size of a blackbird, with really mad white eyes that everyday comes and crashes against the windows of our house. It usually picks the room I’m it, fixes me with one of its raving glassy eyes then bashes its beak in to the glass. It carries on doing this for hours. A couple of big sparrow-like birds have also done the same thing on my window sill in the office. Is this normal or have I been singled out for some kind of avian assault? One of the other VSOs here, a Dutch girl called Nynke, has a very friendly dog called Spencer that she adopted when it was abandoned on the compound she was living on. Nynke is now back home for a few weeks and Spencer, having some entrenched abandonment issues, has adopted me as her new muzungu. Shehas taken up residence on our verandah which Esther – not an animal lover – is not best pleased about. The other day Spencer followed me to work. I tried to shoo her off but she merrily trotted beside me all the way in to town and up the three flights of stairs to my office. She then sat on thefloor, wagging her whirlwind of a tail and getting under Vickie’s – also not an animal lover – feet. I had to walk her home again at lunchtime. The only other animals I have been having rather too much contact with for comfort are the mahoosive cockroaches the size of guavas in our kitchen. I’m too cowardly to deal with them so I tend to just will them away with the power of thought. However Esther takes a more pragmatic approach. She pulverizes them with Doom and they lie on their backs and melt in to a brown sludge. It is pretty grim.