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Wow Jock, that is amazing
Many Gautengers will relate to my latest experience.
I woke up at about 2am a week ago with a strage shrill scream like sound.
It was horrible.
I switched my bedside light on to see what creature had invaded my space. I honestly thought of the scream of the Banshee
My cat was fighting a Parktown Prawn
It was the biggest I had ever seen.
The blighter then squeezed under my bed and spent the next couple of hours complaining.
My cat just went to sleep.

"translation"

These.

Thanks, DQ.

They are legendry in J'burg Northern suburbs.
I had always just laughed them off. Never seen one in my garden, another unban legend.
Believe me, these guys are big and ugly..... and the noise

I had hadeda's in my one big tree last year. They are protected so I couldn't shoot them. This year in winter I chopped the tree down. Finally peace and quiet at 4 in the morning
Ok, before the bullets fly, the tree was falling over and was a danger as it was HUGE

Parktown Prawns, I just learned is good for snails and other garden pests... I won't be killing them on sight anymore. Although my cats regularly bring me one

We saw one this weekend at the Bird Garden at Monte Casino in Jhb. Beautiful little fellow.
Isn't its new name now the Thickknee or am I getting confused.

I hear you Loams ... we have 4 of them .. and when they decide to play "Idols" I want to take my 9mm and "vote them off" ...

Fortunately for them you are not allowed to discharge and weapon in a residential area ... so all I can do now is to ask them in "polite afrikaans" to go away ...

Can't even chop the tree because there are too many trees for them to enjoy ...

And poison is definetly out of the question ... too many other birds that might get it in as well ...

So I have resolved myself to meditation when they start singing ... Even my poor dogs lie down and put their paws over their ears !!!!

Sure the guinea fowl around here would give your old hadedas a run for their money!!! They are a noisy lot!!!!! Start before the sun comes up And yes, we also have hadedas here, but the wind carries their sound far off

I have a theory on why Hadedah's make so much noise......

they are afraid of heights!!!!
Stands to reason, everytime they take off or are a roof/tree etc they are shouting for help.

Some years back I lived in a block of flats where one of the tenants was a Budhist who got up every morning at 6am to meditate.....but first he fed the Guinea Fowl: they knew what time feeding time was and would come screeching from all directions

The other tenants were all young and heavy partyy goers who wished the poor Budhist much bodily harm

2 spotted thickknees seems to breeding 4 houses from mine next to the road, see them often now, when jogging at night. Almost trip over the one on Monday night.

Unfortunately, we missed it but our next door neighbour told us yesterday that she had seen a genet in our back garden last week (this is after a small grey mongoose had a poo in our bedroom during the middle of the night).

I was woken yesterady by a bunch of Guinea Fowl making an almighty racket. On inspection I found about six perched on the garden wall shouting the odds at my snow white cat who watched them with cool disdain from the ground

At around 3:55am this morning I dreamt that I was camping in the Pafuri picnic spot. Frank showing me eleanora's falcon. Then all of a sudden rangers were letting loose with some heavy rifle fire. Counted eventually 7 or 8 shots. Then lions started roaring, according to me about 3km away. A pride I estimated on about 5 or 6 memmbers.

I woke up and and heard the last 3 shots... A karoo thrush was singing outside and I heard a peacock somewhere in the distant too. But still the lions roared. It went deafening silent. I heard no traffic noise and nothing else. I was actually confused and thought that I was in the Park really.

Thought by myself that this was one heck of a realistic dream...

Told my wife this morning whilst cycling that I heard lions roaring. she said that she heard it too but did not tell me as she thought that I would laugh at her like the last time with the thickknee/jack russel incident.

So the conclusion is that we did hear gunshots and we did hear lions roaring. the closest lion farm is about 10kms away from us, so it could not have been coming from there. Did someone shoot at the lions? I doubt cause the gunshots was clearer that the lions's roar. Well it could be perhaps.

I cannot wait to hear if anything gets mentioned in the news tonight or tomorrow. Very interesting!!