Those poor farmers…

As a lot of people have been commenting on the strangeness of the people out here, i figured I’d provide a slightly more well-wounded view of what’s actually happening. You see, although life out here is a bit… odd… at times, as far as the locals are concerned they’ve been invaded by a crazy lizard-girl!

Exhibit A: i was trapping a long fissure along an outcrop, but the lizards were too smart and would evade the traps regularly. as it’s hectically long and I’d had to carry extra traps in preparation of trapping the whole thing I didn’t want to go home empty handed, so I watched where the lizards were going, hid behind some bushes, waited for one to emerge and jumped out yelling “AAAAAAAhhhhAAAAAAAhhhhAAAAAAhhhh” (Whitney Houston would have been impressed!).

Worked like a charm!

So I did it again, with a little more imagination and a few flourishes. of course right then generations 4-through-6 from next door happened to drive past. I had NO idea I was so close to the road! Of course they stopped to watch and I’d just caught a lizard so I couldn’t stop and chat, so I waved, yelled a “hello! I got him!” and ran off. I’m pretty sure the representative fro generation 4 shook his head as he drove off.

Exhibit B: I had spotted some rocks along the main road. I had no idea who the land belonged to, but I’d spoken to everyone in the area who was around and there was an excellent chance that it belonged to the same guy who owned the outcrop with the dam and the crocodiles.

It took me about twenty minutes to get up there (climbing sandstone-granite mix and dodging giant thorny vines while carrying trapping paraphernalia is always fun!) and trapping went well. All in all a good day! until I tried to go home.

The thing with climbing is that going up is usually easier than coming back down. Often if it’s not too far I’m happy to let gravity help but there are these vines that have massive thorns (they’re about the same width as pencils) and I didn’t really want to land on them, particularly with my very precious lizards in tow.

After about forty-five minutes I was halfway down when I slipped and sat down rather hard on a rather spiky rock. My pants (which I’d sewn back together any times by then) ripped and i just managed to stop falling further, although I was pretty sure the rock was going to leave a scar (it did).

A moment later someone drove past, stopped, got out of the car and said “Hello! Hoe gaan dit?”

I smiled, explained that I was working with lizards and he said “Oh! you’re lizard-girl! I’ve heard about you!” We proceeded to have a long conversation with me sitting on the spiky rock and wishing he would go away. When he asked if I needed help I declined, and pretended to be looking for chameleons in the foliage.

So you see, the farmers aren’t the weird ones! I’m sure I’ve provided many stories to keep them occupied!