WE have had a new visitor to the Hide, a most welcome agama lizard.
His identity escaped us for a while because he kept his distance, and then we managed a really close-up look at him, and he would appear to be Southern rock agama, Agama atra atra.*
He is a fairly typical agama, looking remarkably like a very small dinosaur with his horny head and aggressive pose.
They are pretty much ubiquitous in South Africa, surviving in most habitats and on a hugely varied diet.
We are very pleased to have him around.
And from a small dinosaur lookalike, to the big league.
Crocodiles have always been a problem in Africa’s rivers and lakes, but it would seem that they have become a problem in parts of the United States as well.
A report from Florida says that the Nile crocodile has made its appearance in the famous swamps in that state.
It is not known how the African crocs managed to get to Florida, but their arrival is causing great concern over the safety of not only humans, but also local crocs and alligators.
The African crocs are quite cheeky too – one was found basking in the sun on the stoep of a house in Miami.**
Staying prehistoric, in an interesting twist, mammoths could be declared an endangered species some 4,000 years after they became extinct.
IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare) says that tons of mammoth ivory is appearing on the illegal market, causing widespread confusion because it is basically indistinguishable from ordinary elephant ivory.
More and more mammoth carcasses are appearing in Siberia and Alaska as global warming is causing a defrosting of the frozen tundra, thus exposing the long-dead mammoths.
There are an estimated 150-million mammoth carcasses in Siberia alone and declaring the ancient animal an endangered species would help in international efforts to stop modern elephants becoming extinct because of ivory poaching.***
And finally, a really good news story.
We were driving into Port Edward a couple of Sundays ago when our car started to make a funny noise.
I pulled over at the first safe opportunity and we climbed out to do an inspection.
It revealed nothing so I opened the bonnet, hoping something would show up – it didn’t.
Then a passing car did a U-turn and came back towards us and did another U-turn to pull in behind us.
We were immediately nervous about who it could be and what they were after.
We need not have worried, a chap got out of his car and came towards us, asking if we needed help.
He did an inspection, then lay down in the dirt in his Sunday clothes and had a look underneath our car.
“Ah, ha!” he exclaimed, “Found it!” ‘It’ was a loose bit that was dragging on the road.
He fixed it, stood up, dusted himself off and said he would follow us into Port Edward to make sure we made it safely.
So, the age of chivalry and the idea of the Good Samaritan are still around, and it was a GP car nogal.
Cheers!
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