Botswana Wildlife.

Right, don't get too excited - we're not talking big game here or anything. More like very very small game! I just thought maybe I should mention some of the creatures and critters I've come across while I've been here.

In the park

Ok, there are quite a few dogs around, and they are mainly used as guard dogs but also enjoy barking maniacally at people walking by on the other side of the street, and when not partaking of that fun activity they occasionally run around in groups of three or more (without and owner or a leash anywhere in sight) scaring the bejayzus out of people like me as they run past barking and yabbering. Which I'm sure must be loads of fun in the doggy world.

Just a street...

There are lizards galor - which is great for me because I love the little things. Though some of them arent so little! Often sitting in the front garden there will be a movement in the corner of my eye and there'll be a little lizard scampering around to one place or another. In the garden they don't get very big, what you'd class as the little lizard *official term*, but in town I've seen some whoppers just sunning themselves on the rocks. The other day I watched two little lizards chasing each other around the garden which was most entertaining. They would both stand still for ages and then all at once both of them would run around, one of them (the bigger one) chasing the other (the littler one - I was rooting for the littler one). Then they'd stop and look at each other for a while before scuttling off again. Very funny.

MEEEEEEE!

The ants! There are loads and loads of ants everywhere! Most of them are teeny-tiny, the kind that suddenly realise you have all over you when you look down because they are so small you didn't feel a thing! Then there are the big ants! These things are mahoosive! They are about the size of... you know on your little finger how it two joints seperating it into three sections? Well they are the size of two of the sections on my little finger. Quite intimidating and I swear I can see them looking at me and giving me the evil eye - willing me to drop a piece of the cake... I mean healthy nutricious apple... that I'm eating. Shudder!

More of the Mall

There are these really weird flying insects that I have absolutely no idea what they are. They are sort of like bumble bees only about three times the size and much much squarer (is that a word?). They are like small fuzzy flying boxes that make a huge amount of noise and are some very strange un-bumble-bee like colours.

There are, off course, the usual crickets, flies, wasps, mosquitos and other joys, but I must tell you of something that scared the c*** out of me. I was sitting in the front garden, deeply engrossed in some great work of fiction (probably by Steven King) when something hit me in the face! Now, I don't mean something fell and landed on my face, I mean that something - quite possibly with deeply malicious intent - launched itself at me from somewhere nearby and hit the bulls eye! I leapt to my feet, or tried to and managed to nearly fall over the chair I was resting my feet on when I got all entangled in my sarong, and looked at what had assaulted me. It was what looked like a cross between a stick insect and a cricket. It was that grey/brown colour of a broken off piece of bark from a tree in a hot country, had wings and lots of legs (there may not have been exactly lots of legs but it seemed that way from my panicked state) and was about the length of my hand! I kid you not - the thing was enormous (lets see how many other words I can find to mean "big" shall we?). I'm absolutely positive that if I hadn't been so quick on my feet (ahem) that I would have been slowely devoured and all they would have found would have been my bones, and no one would have known that a giant cricket-stick insect hybrid was the culprit - because, really, who'd believe such a thing?!?

Summer umbrellas

Ok, wish me luck - today is the day I am going to attempt to upload some pictures.