WE were sitting in the lounge the other night when we both heard an odd sort of ‘ping’ sound.
It sounded as though it was electrical and right there in the lounge.
My wife went to investigate (I’m temporarily on crutches), checking the house alarm keypad first, then the mains board in a cupboard, then the gate intercom – it was none of them.
Later, I was in my study and there was that electrical ‘ping’ again. Right in the study.
We checked the printer-cum-copier-cum-scanner, then the spaghetti junction that is the main plug field next to my desk, and finally the electric fence energiser, which permanently clicks quietly away to itself – none of them.
I opened the study window and suddenly the ‘ping’ was outside. It sounded a bit like the electric fence when something has fallen over it, but no, that didn’t seem right. So we went out onto the deck and the ‘ping’ had moved into the front garden. It suddenly dawned on us that it was a frog.
As I’m sure you know by now, our home is a timber structure on stilts, surrounded by trees, and for some reason sound effects around the house are very strange, hence the frog in the house.
Changing the subject, there is welcome news of the birth of a pygmy hippo in the Bristol Zoological Gardens in the UK.
This is good because there are fewer than 2 000 pygmy hippos left in the wild in West Africa, where their habitat is rapidly being destroyed by logging, particularly in Liberia,
The Bristol Zoological Gardens breeding programme is part of an international effort to ensure the survival of the species.*
Less welcome news is that the last Northern white rhino in the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park in the United States has died, leaving just three in existence.
The San Diego rhino was rescued from poachers in the Sudan in the 1980s. The three surviving Northern white rhino are in a well-protected conservancy in Kenya. The Western white rhino was declared extinct in 2011.**
And finally, I’d like to pay tribute to a great conservationist, Dr Hymie Ebedes, who died recently.
I first met Hymie (everyone called him Hymie), on assignment in the bush many years ago.
I’ve no doubt we were both on our knees in the dust beside a specimen of valuable wildlife, a rhino or a roan antelope or something like that, Hymie with his veterinary emergency kit and me with my radio microphone.
Hymie was a brilliant wildlife vet. He had been involved in the development of various quite revolutionary aspects of wildlife capture and translocation techniques, and remember that we’re talking about 30 years ago.
Perhaps almost as important was that he was always available to us media types. In those days we didn’t call them sound bytes, perhaps 15 seconds long, we called them interviews, anything from three to 15 minutes, and Hymie was always there for us. He was just a great guy.
Bless you, Hymie, cheers!
*The London Daily Telegraph.
**Care2Causes.
