Living with scary critters in Randfontein

When you move to the countryside -- even though my piece of countryside is only 11 kilometres out of town and not a very attractive town at that -- you end up sharing your life, space and home with all sorts of critters.
Some are nice, like the hedgehogs that make occasional rare appearances in our garden. Or the chameleons that take up residence in the trees from time to time.
There are many birds out here -- I counted 28 different species in the space of an hour on one occasion.
And on sometimes at night we hear the call of jackals or the hoot of owls.
It sounds as though I live a little corner of paradise. My own private game reserve.
My northern suburbs friends become all misty eyed when they look across my 21-acre estate, watching the sun set and then, right on cue, the dogs spook a rabbit and go whooping after it across the gold-smeared fields.
"Oh this is just so wonderful," I remember one particular Sandton resident saying. "I'd move here in a shot, if I had the chance."
Of course she'd do no such thing. Living in a gated-community on a golf estate allows her to do the important things in life -- like playing golf and bridge with her girlfriends and lazing by her pool to tune up her tan before the annual Plett holiday.
She does like wildlife. Hell she and hubby have a Pajero and go to a lodge in Botswana every year. But she likes it at a distance, preferably with a tall, ice-frosted glass clasped in one of her well-manicured hands.
And she likes only cute critters.

Life's not like that

But that's not the way life is out here.
When you live on a farm -- I like to call it a farm. It sounds more posh than telling people I live on a plot -- you share your space with more varieties of bugs and biting insects than you knew existed. Rats, in particular, find your home and ceiling especially attractive.
They seek warmth wherever they can find it, sometime taking that quest to ridiculous levels.
Like the time Mrs White Ou asked me what I wanted for breakfast.
"Just a slice or two of toast, please Dear," I replied.
From the lounge I could hear her open the bread bin and a few seconds later yelp as a loud explosive, electrical flash took place in the kitchen, tripping all the power in the house.
"I'll check the breaker outside," I said.
I reset it and she switched the toaster on again.
The blue flash that arced from the toaster to the plug was mighty impressive, as was the gunshot-like crack when the power tripped again. This time it was accompanied by a strange smell -- a cross between hair burning and chicken cooking.
"I think there is something wrong with the toaster," she said, peering into it a moment before she let out a shriek I'm sure the neighbour on the next "farm" heard.
There, in the bottom of the toaster, wedged between the heating elements, eyes popped with smoke emitting from its mouth and twitching like an inmate strapped to an electric-chair, was a large, grey, Norwegian Rat.
Lest I convey the impression that Mrs White Ou is afraid of scary critters let me place on record, she is not.
For example, the colony of bats that has set up home in an air-brick in my office scares me shitless but, for some unexplained reason, my dear wife finds them cute -- especially when they fly in tight formation around her broom.

Snakes

Even snakes do not bother her much and, over the years, we have had our share of encounters with those creatures!
The two types most come across are the puff adder and the rinkhals, neither of which you want to meet in a dark alley, or anywhere else for that matter. Yeah, I know the "they're more scared of you crap..." that gets spouted by greenies who only ever encounter them on the National Geographic Channel, but when you have a metre-long, seriously pissed-off, puff adder in your kitchen, you tend to be less sanguine and understanding.
Which is exactly what happened on one occasion.
Both Mrs White Ou and I were away from home but at different places. When Mrs White Ou returned she found the Maid standing outside, acting more weird than usual.
It seems a puff adder had crawled into the kitchen alcove and she'd pushed the pet bull terrier in with it and locked the door.
Fortunately, both the maid and the bull terrier were blessed with the same level of intelligence, which is to say, almost none.
I don't think the dog even knew the snake was there and the reptile slithered into a corner from where it spent the next hour hissing at the none-the-wiser dog.
Mrs White Ou was faced with a dilemma. In previous snake-encounters she simply used her broom to sweep the serpent into a box and then released the critter in the veld "so it can help keep the rat population down and not upset the delicate balance of nature." (Funny how there's never a snake around when you really need it -- like when a rat tries to warm itself in your toaster!)
But this puff adder wasn't of a mind to simply be swept aside.
There was no alternative but to shoot it, which was easier said than done considering its foul mood and the fact it was hiding in a small room.
Then there was the small issue that the only firearm almost suited to the task was a single-shot, target .22 pistol.
But Mrs White Ou was not to be deterred. Twelve shots later, along with a number of bullet holes in the wall, a punctured dog's food-bowl and gooey bits of puff adder liberally scattered about, the job was done.
It might have been dirty -- nothing like a hit by the Calzone Crew -- but it was impressive and didn't go unnoticed by the dim-witted maid whose productivity suddenly doubled.
I too took note. She's scary. I mean... if she could do that to a critter she actually thought was important in the greater scale of things...