Trapped

A second day of pouring rain! A wet weather system has lingered over the country for days, and heavy rain and flooding are reported; warnings about using certain roads have been broadcast. In an average January, the sun would be blazing, temperature about 35+°, and maybe a short, sharp thunderstorm by evening. Ho-hum, Ive got lots of things to catch up on without going out in it!
A couple of weeks ago an article in the local paper described how a lady's pet ridgeback had been caught in a wire snare, and survived for ten days; the injury to the leg resulted in gangrene, and the leg had to be amputated, but the dog is fine. Pet dogs and cats do remarkably well on three legs. The story brought to mind a similar incident that happened long ago while on holiday on the Natal coast, and I've copied here a letter to the newspaper, which they were kind enough to publish last week:

The Editor, The Witness:

Dear Sir,

The moving story about C____ P____’s pet (The Witness 16 January ) struck a chord with me. In the early 1950’s my family, with pets, spent the Christmas holidays at a cottage near the beach at Umzumbe*. At that time the dune forest was still extensive and dense. One day our little black Dachshund disappeared, and after some searching we heard his faint yelps from somewhere in the bush. My father, my sister and I began to search. Barefoot, dressed in T-sirts and shorts, we were scratched to ribbons, the bush was incredibly thick and overgrown. I just couldn’t home in on the yelping, but after much searching I found the dachsie, his foot caught in a vicious toothed jaw-trap. With some difficulty (I was only a teenager) I managed to depress the strong spring sufficiently to release the foot, and our pet was carried back to the cottage and we then trekked to the Port Shepstone vet. By some miracle, the toothed jaws had closed between the fine bones of the foot, and the little chap was only badly bruised.

We up-rooted the stake to which the trap was fixed, and took it to the Umtentweni Police Station, where they assured us it would be kept for a statutory period and then destroyed. It was not the first they had seen. Those traps were set to catch the tiny Upiti and Blue Duikers, which in those days were still plentiful in the coast bush: we saw many around the cottage all the years we went there.

Regards,

Ian Buchan.

30 years later, about 1982, we returned to the cottage for a holiday: this was the view from the porch towards the beach. In the 1950's much of the area of lawn was covered with dune forest, which greww much closer to the porch, leaving just a narrow path to the beach.

The cottage as we found it in 1982. In the early days we often slept on the proch, the susurration of the Indian Ocean surf lulling us to sleep. Before 5:00am the sun would rise over the ocean, tempting us for a dawn bathe.

* For those unfamiliar with South African place-names, these are the original Zulu names; just pronounce them phonetically -- it's difficult to explain! The U- sound is 'oo' as in 'room'. The Zulu names for most of the rivers draining to the Indian Ocean were adopted by the settlers, and were often onomatopoeic or commemorated some legendary event. Port Shepstone is the exception - Sir Theophilus Shepstone was a notable, if controversial, figure in Natal colonial history.