Tuesday 27 September 2011

Sitting under a tree...

It's 1 pm here and I'm sitting under a tree in the yard watching samango monkeys scampering around. They climb pretty well and on the ground they look almost catlike in the way they move.

We went out early this morning to follow the baboons and found them just before 6 am in a big fig tree. After a breakfast of figs they went to sit in the sun. They wandered up to a neighbouring farm to graze in a burned patch, then around 10 they went through an impenetrable thicket and up a cliff and we lost them. While we were following them it was unbelievable being so close to these wild animals and having them not mind.

I am being watched. The two white horses that live on the property have come up behind me. They are supposed to be feral and nobody looks after them, but they like people well enough. They will eat from your hand and they like to be brushed. We have sat on their backs but they don't take kindly to being told where to go. The way to make horses accept you as the leader is to make them run around a pen until they will come to you and behave, but we don't have a pen and I think these horses might just kick you instead of running. Lady, the mother horse, has scars all over her neck from a leopard attack years ago. Anything that can fight off a leopard probably won't be easily pushed around. Leopards usually don't attack people and a horse is even bigger so I don't know why it went after her.

4 comments:

  1. What time does the sun come up? How many people are there? How big is the property? You really will have to post photos, please...

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  2. you know you're in the back of beyond when there are feral horses.

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  3. Thank you for your posting, Sarah! We all enjoy discussing them.

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  4. I love your Mom's questions...I did the same to my daughter when she was in Argentina this summer...

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