Don’t be a dumb lalochezia and wait for winter to fall on your head.
I am yelling obscenities at nature as I scribble this.
The landlady is laughing in her bed as she hears the Engelsman cursing in Afrikaans at 7am on a Sunday.
I was the one who had said “let nature take its course” when the hadada ibis (bostrychia hagedash) couple came to nest in the milkwood at the back of our seaside garden — metres from my window.
But after one season of breeding, and we are now in the same horrible wildlife-human suburban warzone occupied by baboons, monkeys, and even lions and ellies in our game reserves.
My ex-father-in-law, a dedicated nature conservationist, when asked how he handled a leguaan (Veranus niloticus) once it had taken occupancy in the roof of his South Coast home, making the most dreadful body-scraping noises, said he gave Veranus a round of buckshot.
The dreadful clash of modern human convenience and thousands, or millions, of years of wild evolution, when monkeys and baboons raid your kitchen, rhino or ellies charge your vehicle, is inevitably won by humans with their fences, guns, traps, pesticides and of course, our A5 high-note swingeing, incredibly entitled sense of outrage and offence.
A5 is the highest note hit on a Sunday night in 1973 by session singer Claire Torry, 25, when she recorded Pink Floyd’s most famous piece, Great Gig in the Sky, the epic climax of their iconic Dark Side of the Moon album.
It sold 45-million copies — the fourth-best-selling album of all time.
She was asked to simply vocalise and when “ooh baby baby” did not work for the band, she gave it her guttural, soaring, incredible best — so good that other wonderful singers, including her older self, battled to hit it with quite the same intensity, if at all, in their covers. (@randomvocalsforyou3879 Singers attempting the Great gig in the sky high notes”.)
It’s super entertaining and glorious in its diversity.
I am not sure what note these three hardies are hitting, but it’s more of a head-banging, shock-punk-opera outburst with almighty wing-flapping.
They are so freakin’ raucous they spike the heart rate! Please don’t let them be reproducing.
Should I resort to the water gun placed so mirthfully and I-told-you-so-ish outside my garage door?
Then a friend tells me about the hadada that arrived with its leg falling off outside her outside office.
She felt so sorry for it that she started trying to feed it.
Listen, once you feed wildlife, there is no stopping, for that sets up habituation and dependency, and when you go, the birds and cats and whatever you were feeding, literally starve. Stopping is cruelty to animals.
But now she is deep in the world of hadadas; she finally settles on dog food as the best nutrition, and the moment she starts feeding ol’ one leg, two ruffians pull in and drive one leg out of the feeding zone.
Now she has to feed surreptitiously — some for the six Chinas who pull in for chow from the nice lady, and a little secret bowl for one leg.
She learns that hadadas live for up to 16 years, and she is at year 10 hadada now — that is dedication.
There is actually a word to describe my shifting emotions towards these magnificent creatures with their cerise stripe on their menacing beak, their iridescent green and purple patches which glitter in the sun.
That word is “lalochezia” — the emotional, cathartic, relief gained from using profane language.
It stems from the Greek “lalia” (speech) and “chesis” (to relieve).
You won’t find it in your standard regular dictionary and few English teachers will write it on the whiteboard, but you will know it next time you stub your toe and let out a string of expletives.
I’m using it in the psychological, linguistic sense to release my emotional pain and stress caused by these f**** hadadas.
Language is all about tone. This came floating over to me in the midst of the cut-off-low mid-latitude cyclone which curled around eastern and southern SA like a menacing dragon, with a sting of a scorpion in its tail.
Many of us know the weather has changed for the worse — it is plain to see how many people are using up so much of the Earth and spewing it out as pollution along with a load of other destructive, anti-social behaviours.
We have had two of these storms — frightening to those who know what they are, and simply “bad weather” for those who choose to look away.
They are frigid, clockwise-wheeling, giant tops, except their tip is more like the end of a galactic firefighter’s hose.
These Antarctic-spawned beasts tear themselves off from the westerly drifting herd and come down to ground.
Last week’s storm gyred slowly from Durban, off KuGompo dropping rain on the way and as it approached Gqeberha, Gamtoos and Vic Bay it matured into a full, cut-off storm, and then it deluged.
What does 900mm of rain over a few days feel like?
In the tiny settlement of Krakeel in the Langkloof, they will tell you.
It then did a final turn and started heading back towards us, all the time being pumped up with marine air brought in on the conveyer belt of the high pressure cells which are themselves inflated and overheated by the anthropocene — global warming.
I was in Makhanda helping sis with her 70th party. It was grand fun, so many amazing speeches from her children, siblings and friends.
As the master of ceremonies, I learnt that soliciting messages from family brings out some unexpected and magnificent stories, amazing qualities you did not know your family saw in you.
On the hard news side, I learnt about a “cat fight” between two tiddly teenage sisters over a jersey while waiting for their cousin to come out of Numbers.
The storm was due to hit Makhanda at midnight, and it was on time.
It rained the whole, frozen night. I staggered out of bed and while having a cup of tea at the kitchen table heard that ominous “clonk”!
Put on a rain coat and went out in shorts. Shu! A large bough has snapped and is suspended high up on three electrical wires.
Down on the ground the branches narrowly missed Hetty, the GSA 1200, and are lying in the narrow sidepath between the car port and Sissy’s jalopy and the hedge.
It’s action time. I reach for the closest tool, the saw blade on my el cheapo Terratac multitool and start to hack away in the rain.
One 3cm branch at a time I eat my way up this large piece of foliage.
I am about four pieces cut in when I hear this little voice floating out of the kitchen door: “I do have a saw in the garage …”
By now, I have also cleared out debris from the gutter and downpipe.
“A saw! What the [lalochezia]! I have been out here for how long with this piddly tool and you have a saw?”
Turns out to be a meneer bow saw and I quickly eat my way up to the final three metres.
Now the bough is heavy and it pinches the blade as pieces slowly fall.
The last cut is the deepest and … the bough untangles and tumbles to the hedge. Easy peasy.
I am cold, my takkies are wet, and I ponder that age-old line between going out in a storm and hiding under your duvet.
As I speak, the gustfront has literally exploded from the northwest here on Gonubie Point.
I run out to try to get a shot of any bits flying, but all I get are walkers now running for their cars, the sea shredded to hell, possibly some water spouts on the horizon and the trees next to our house going crazy.
A bit dejected and relieved that no zinc came zinging through the air, I get to my flat and … an enormous palm tree trunk has toppled to the ground and is leaning on the landlady’s now-dented Companion camper.
A metre or two to the right and it would have been on my head in my office.
She comes out saying wind really frightens her and she is literally under the covers.
I approach the leaning tower of palm tree, expecting it to weigh a ton, and lift it easily — it has vrotted out completely and only weighs about 25kg.
I remove it from the van and lay it down. I feel like Kevin Cole when he lifts an enormous old canon and carries it around like Superman while kids gape.
Well, of course, it’s a styrofoam replica.
But my tree fell from high and could have given my flat a good wallop.
Thank [lalochezia] I was out there trying to get a shot of damage and not at my desk lamely and tamely tikking away.
This is a wild winter, don’t be a dumb lalochezia and lie there like a mozzie waiting to be blatted.