From my Hide: Mr Spotty is back

WE were sitting quietly in the Hide the other evening with a nightcap, listening to Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. It was all very pleasant and most relaxing and all was well with the world, until my wife started making “Shushing!” noises.

I hadn’t said a word since the first movement so I assumed she was referring to the Berlin Philharmonic. She wasn’t, however, she was trying to tell me that our large spotted genet was back in the Hide.

Mr Spotty has been a fairly regular visitor for about five years now. He first appeared in 2010, much to our delight, paying us the occasional visit and usually late evening.

We were particularly thrilled the other night because we hadn’t seen him for some time and we always worry about his well-being.

His visits always seem to follow the same pattern – he doesn’t arrive with a crash and a chatter, like the monkeys, he is just suddenly there in the gloom, a bit like Banquo’s ghost, unexpectedly there among us.

He sniffs around a bit, inspecting the pot plants and on occasion even our toes under the table, and then just as suddenly he and his tail are slithering over the top step down into the garden below.

He’s been back since, so we know he’s established in the neighbourhood, but somehow this one seems smaller than our original visitor – Son of Mr Spotty, perhaps?

The Hide clearly falls within his home territory, which could be anything from 50 to 100 hectares, but now there is even some debate on whether they are territorial at all, and given the urban sprawl that is now so much a part of their natural habitat down here, one can but wonder if they, like so much other wildlife, see it all as their territory.

From genets to something a little bigger. A while back I wrote about a lone grey wolf that had been sighted and photographed at the Grand Canyon in Arizona in the United States of America, far from its home stamping ground in the Rocky Mountains in the Yellowstone National Park far to the north between Montana and Wyoming.

The sighting in Arizona caused considerable excitement because it was the first wolf to be seen there in 70 years. Well, I’m very sad to report that the wolf has been shot*.

Apparently it had started to move back north and had reached neighbouring Utah, where there is a US$50 bounty on coyotes, which are considered vermin.

An unnamed hunter shot the wolf, thinking it was a $50 coyote, and then realising his mistake had the good grace to report it to the authorities. They knew it was the same wolf because it was wearing a radio collar.

What a ridiculous thing to happen, demonstrating the anomalies that can occur in conservation efforts. The re-introduction of the grey wolf in Yellowstone has been a resounding success, and yet a couple of states away one has been shot. Go figure, as the Americans say. Cheers!

*Care2 Causes