Since I wrote this (below), there was breaking news about the first rhino poached in Swaziland in almost 20 years. Devastating and sad, to say the least. It has been in the papers ever since the incident on June 4th. I don’t know if it made international news. Chances are it didn’t, which is why I’m notifying you. Luckily suspects have been apprehended and have had their preliminary court hearing. Hopefully, this will let the international organized crime ring behind them know that they can’t get away with this here. Meanwhile, rhino poaching in South Africa has been escalating and 333 rhinos were poached in 2010 alone. That’s almost 1/day! Gruesome photo (you’ve been warned!)
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I’ve uploaded new photos and figured I should provide some commentary to explain some of them. Some, however, I have no explanation for like the various animals that approached the windows to look inside and/or admire their reflections on the same day! Was something in the air?
If you’ve looked at photos already from earlier in the year then you’ve seen a tan Peruvian lady and her French husband, good friends of mine who moved away in May. Until then we enjoyed lots of hikes and other activities, culminating in their farewell party April 30th. There was another big farewell party in May for several expats, which coincided with Judgment Day. So to celebrate the rapture some friends put together quite an extravaganza.
The wildlife continues to amaze and astound, including a spate of frogs in my house and car, all appearing to be the same species and age (same size). But what has really amazed me and provoked admiration is a juvenile female vervet monkey. I noticed her for the first time in February when she had a grotesquely mangled right arm. It was black and furless from her fingertips to halfway up her upper arm. As I watched her with binoculars, backlit by the afternoon sun, I saw light passing through between her bones. And the mangled part was frozen into position--slightly curled fingers, drooping wrist and a 90* bend in the elbow. She limped about, just keeping up with the rest of the troupe, and understandably appeared to be in pain though her body condition otherwise looked fine.
I wondered about her in the following weeks, puzzling over what caused the injury and what became of her. I figured she probably suffered from a dry snake bite by one of the types that has cytotoxic venom like a puff adder. This dissolved the tissue in the region of the bite. But, being a dry bite, she didn’t get much venom so it didn’t kill her. That’s my hypothesis anyway.
Eventually she resurfaced, this time with three healthy limbs and one stump. But she was getting around fantastically, as if she were born that way. She ran and climbed and kept up with the others with no trouble. I was ebullient. She was alive and well! Since then I’ve seen her too many times to count. Now, thanks to her, I can always recognize her group and I now know that this group hangs out in and around the rest camp where I live. I call her my hero because she survived a terrible injury with no doctors, no antibiotics, no pain killers, and no surgery. The epitome of triumph over tragedy.
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