The icy wind always heralds its arrival on Livingstone, to the hauntingly beautiful sound of Whalesong in A Minor, coming from the windchimes at the southern door of the farmhouse. They were my gift to myself at Christmas last year...in a bid to bring peaceful vibrations to the Staghorn fern, that had been relocated to a position where it would be more loved and cared for! Even though the icy winds were few and far between, the realitively inconvenient placement of the windchimes resulted in them being walked into quite often, guaranteeing the melodious sounds and peaceful vibrations being combined with the odd swearword....a strange combination, but one which the Staghorn seemed to flourish in..gaining new antler like leaves far faster than the other Staghorn plants that werent calmed with Whalesong in A Minor! When the icy winds came howling onto Livingstone early this morning, they welcomed the new eland that had been captured yesterday, from a place in the Sandveld, where the Baobab trees grow. Most of them had been born in the Sandveld, on a farm where narrow, winding, sandy roads were more easily accessible by the bottle green Rhino cart, than the two shiny, wide bakkies and a very large, 6 compartment,crane truck and trailer, that had come to snatch them away and move them to a sanctuary where other eland of the same old, imported bloodlines, were nurtured and protected. Their day had started as usual yesterday. Grazing peacefully, the small herd had wandered through the little hunting camp...picking up the fallen leaves and pods, that lay on the dark, red sand. The camp was quiet, as the last hunters had left and returned to the city with the small carcasses of animals that had lived with the herd. The eland were nervous around the scent of men...never knowing whether they would be the next ones to hang by their back legs...with their life blood draining out...and they wasted no time in moving silently back into the long, yellow grass with the strangely shaped trees. Later on, in their day, as the sun baked their red hides, they heard the noise of the sky machine. The little herd knew this noise...it had come over them when the rhino on the other side of their fence, had lost their lives to men with guns...greedy men, who had stolen the horns of the large animals, along with their lives. This time though, the air around them swirled, and red sand stung their eyes and got into their noses and they tasted it... This time they knew it was time to run. One by one, the small herd felt the sharp sting of an orange tailed dart, and they ran away from the sky machine and the swirling sand, until an unknown tiredness made them lie down in the tall, yellow grass. Many men came and put them onto stretchers, which they towed behind the once shiny bakkies...towed through the thick, hot, red sand...with men riding alongside them...holding them upright ,back to the crane truck. These men had no guns...these humans had come to take them to a place where no eland are ever hunted...but the small herd did not know this. They were filled with fear...but could not move.... A large ear tag was clipped into an ear, a microchip placed under their skin, dewormer, vitamins, trace elements and protection for their lungs, was injected into them, and blood and tail hairs were taken for dna. Then the precious eland were picked up by the crane and loaded, one by one, into the compartments, pipes were put onto their horns for protection, and they were woken up. But the heat, and the late arrival of the sky machine, combined with the limited movement on the narrow, sandy roads, had taken too much time to carefully move the little herd, and the red sun was slowly being swallowed up by the line of bush on the horizon. The sky machine had its doors put back on...its tanks refuelled...and rose up in a swirling cloud of dried grass and leaves, and the red sand of the farm where the little herd had lived. The long horned bull and two of the weanling calves had run off into the far corner of the farm, and would have to wait for two more weeks before they saw their family again... And so the little herd travelled through the night to the place where they would be safe, and, in the early morning light, they jumped off the crane truck, and ran onto Livingstone...where the icy wind welcomed them, accompanied by the beautiful chimes of the Whalesong in A Minor.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 14:32:32 +0000
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