Happy New Year Everyone!

May there be the whitest, brightest light at the end of your tunnel!!!

Happy New Year!!

xoxo

Dear Lord......Please Can We Erase,Delete,Backspace Yesterday...???

Yesterday was a little exciting..to say the least...

This is an account of what happened to me..

I was cleaning up the house when I noticed Minki sniffing and running around the house...this was a serious sniffing...her nose was jiggling up and down the floor taking in great big gulps of very exciting scent...very,very fresh too...I glanced out the kitchen window and saw Cules busy welding something and was just about to call him and show him what Minki was doing and then thought better of it as it was the first day of work after the Christmas holidays and he was busy sorting out the farm labourers etc..I got our permanent worker and his wife to help me finish up the painting job on the house' windows we had started before Christmas and after about ten minutes or so I decided to go check on my e-mail as I was expecting a message from someone and as I sat down by the laptop in the kitchen, I noticed Minki was still excitedly sniffing about but by now she was sniffing around the kitchen cabinets..I smiled and called her a silly pup for getting so excited by the smell of a mouse....

The next second all hell broke loose...

What happened next had been my worst fear come true in the two years since I have owned Minki.....

She pulled a ten metre Spitting cobra out of  one of my cast iron pots....

Ok,so maybe it was more like eight metres long....

Okay,okay, Cules said it was one and a half meters long...

I don't ever want to lose my puppy due to a snakebite...

I am scared *hitleessss of snakes...!

Minki threw the snake into the middle of the kitchen..,I heard a very far- off primitive screaming...the screaming wouldn't stop...I realised it was me screaming...the noise still wouldn't stop.....

Minki doesn't like it when I scream,she new I was screaming because of the big bad snake in the kitchen..

She went at it again,the serpent was now sailing all over the kitchen floor..

I jumped up from my chair behind the laptop trying to get away to go call my husband..save my puppy...

The chair fell flat down on the floor behind me...Minki grabbed the snake by it's tail and shook it and tossed it up,up into the air...it fell on me,..I stepped over backwards and fell over the chair..the snake was slithering over my legs and Minki was on top of us....I could still hear that unearthly screaming going on...I could FEEL my blood beating through my veins,I could HEAR my own heart beating...

I scrambled up and ran outside to go get my husband..I could still hear that screaming,my husband was gone..he had left minutes before to go get sawdust for the stables...the farm labourer and his wife had run off when I started screaming...I ran back inside the house to go try and get my precious Minki who must have been bitten by the snake a zillion times by now...I entered the kitchen from the other side to avoid the fight going on under the dining table,only to find the fight had moved back to the other side of the kitchen and once again I found myself slap bang in the middle of it! Minki charged at me with the serpent securely in her mouth wanting to show of her trophy to me so badly ...I was still hearing that screaming going on...I turned and ran..I realised I was getting myself trapped in the corner of the kitchen with the snake and dog..all I could think of to buy myself some time was to tip over my kitchen table with a million Rands' worth of spices, herbs,coffee and an open 5kg bag of sugar that I was going to put into containers...

By this time the kitchen floor was absolutely covered in snake blood,intestines,gore and spit....

I knew I had to now  GET OUT OF THERE!!!

I was slipping and sliding on the blood and gore and sugar and dried chilies and things but I was making headway...I was getting out...Minki followed with the snake still in her mouth...

As I ran out the back door,driven by sheer terror,the labourer and his wife had returned to help me and the wife had stepped inside the door with a broom in her hands 'cause she figured out it must be only a snake that can make the white lady scream so much..As she stepped inside the house, I ran slap bang into her, she thought the devil was in the house and turned to run also and fell over her husband,they both fell down onto the patio and I ground my heels into their bodies trying to find enough traction to get away from the dog and snake even faster...

In such situations,speed is very important...

Minki put the snake down on the patio..it was now either dead or playing dead as cobras are notorious for doing...She was absolutely covered in blood and gore,she had bitten the snake nearly in half....The farm labourer thought he was going to take the snake away and get rid of it..only...Minki wasn't giving away her prize...this was when I remembered her last encounter with a cobra when it spat in her eyes and her eyes was swollen shut and weeping for almost a week....She got retaliation and there was no way she was  giving up her prize...there was only one person on that farm yesterday that could take the snake away from her...Mommy.

I got Minki washed and cleaned her eyes out and checked her over for snake bites,Cules' phone was off,he was in a no signal area,I left a panicked message...

I managed to grab Minki and washed her, I realised that her eyes seemed to be fine as the last time a cobra spat at her the burning started instantly..

One spot on her side that was particularly bloodied caught my eyes as a possible bite site and I clipped it...no bite marks...my phone rang...it was Cules wanting to know what happened..,he told me to calm down an check her breathing, was it irregular?....a short pause from my side ,yes she wants her snake back!....Was she having heart palpitations?.....another short pause...yes! She wants her snake back!

Picture this,you are sitting on a blood and gore plastered kitchen floor trying to hold down a Jack Russel with the killing mood still over her and a electric clipper in the other hand and a phone stuck to your ear with the shoulder and having to try to establish whether your doggy is dying of snakebite...

...In comes the farm labourer's wife and all she can do is whistle and say..

Hau....

...All that sugar.....

Tsk,Tsk!

Never mind the overturned chair and table,blood and gore covered kitchen....

No doubt she could think of better things to do with sugar than spilling it out all over the floor,just because of a silly snake!

20 minutes later, things have calmed down a bit,the dog was fine,the kitchen cleaned up I had spoken to Cules on the phone and confirmed that Minki was all right.

The farm labourer's wife and I was finishing up the window job when my husbands' presence filled the door, and I thought my chivalrous husband would take me in his arms and comfort me a bit after all that terror I had gone through all on my own....

"What's for supper?" He says....

The African lady collapsed on the floor in a stupor of giggles and then ran out the house...

The End

P.S My throat hurts....

To All Of You.....!

                                                                           Merry Christmas!!

Hope you all have a lovely day!

Reconciliation Day

 Today is Reconciliation Day here in South Africa...very interesting to Google... In short, our “Boer” forefathers where attacked by the Zulus this day in 1838. 470 Voortrekkers defeated 10 000-15 000 Zulu warriors! 3000 Zulus died and only 3 Voortrekkers where lightly wounded,including their leader,Andries Pretorius. The blood of the dead Zulus turned the Ncome River red, in what is today,KwaZulu-Natal and from there it was called the Battle of Blood River. Andries Pretorius made a very interesting pact with God should He make victory  the Boers'....very long and interesting story,but still,today,we Afrikaners commemorate this day and spend it honouring our God and brave forefathers! 

This bronzed picture is a piece of Africana which belonged to Cules' Grandparents. It depicts the hard times experienced by the Voortrekkers after escaping British Rule in the Cape Of Good Hope . These pioneers trekked all the way North from the Cape and suffered through terrible ordeals on the African mainland,fighting,Zulus,Xhosa,Matabele,Khoisan,wild animals and horrible diseases....to name but a few...The men,woman and children walked over mountains and fought their way North....They literally took their ox wagons apart and reasembled them at the bottom of the mountains whenever they couldn't drive them across..time and again and carried them piece by piece over these mountains...Talk about tenacity!!

                                                    It has pride of place in the short hallway in our old farmhouse.

Typically me,my house can be a mish -  mash of styles because I can never make up my mind as to what I really like,except for the fact that lots of thingies needs lots of cleaning and I like to spend my time doing more fun things off course! I bought this chandelier in a frenzy of French Country style loving and then realised that all those white thingies wasn't going to work in my household of greasy hands,lots of animal poo no doubt being carried in from outside etc

The black Stetson on the right was given to Cules as a gift when one of his fellow  horseshoeing student buddies in Oklahoma,won a big rodeo event one night and got a huge horse float and truck as prize!

Anyway..,here is a close- up of the picture

Have a great weekend everyone!

The End

Big Game Fishing,Sodwana and St Lucia

My youngest daughter,  Jessica is on her yearly scuba diving vacation to Sodwana and has also been big game fishing...thus far she has caught Tuna, a 208kg Blue Marlin and a huge  shark that took her and four of her chums 8 hours to reel in!!!...no joking!! She is coming back in a week's time and we will upload some pics of this whole adventure. The first time she went out onto the ocean on the boat she was sick the whole time but was very happy to find that after that she hasn't been sick again! She has taken her own tent and camping equipment and is having a ball! I wish I was there too!


This pic is not related to the topic today but I thought it such a cute moment in time I had to share.....

Minki and Scruffy on a rainy afternoon...

Be Afraid....

Yesterday morning after washing the dishes and a quick cleaning of the kitchen I stepped outside to check up on  all the animals..Much to my surprise I saw our truck and horsebox arriving through a secondary entrance to our farm.., kind of scaly like...Cules, who I saw literally just minutes before being busy on the yard, got out and he had this"Boy have I got a surprise for you..." kind of smirk on his face...

                                                             To me that look translates to:

                                                         "Be afraid...be very,very much afraid!"

Like this....

I was stunned...perhaps he had arranged for someone to go and fetch that Welsh Sec C stallion in the Johannesburg area I have been eyeing these last few weeks...

Could it be???

My excitement building..... I ran on over..

I had my camera on me as I was going to take pics of another chicken hen with two guinea chicks..but alas I clean forgot all about that!

He told me to stand back a bit when peeking inside the horse trailer....

"No man! I don't want no stallion who would like to take my head off!!"

"What stallion are you talking about?" he asked me with that stupid grin on his face..?

"Ha! I was quick on that one,wasn't I?"

Then I heard a grunt..like no horse can ever grunt....

Then I peeked in to see this....

A trailer load full of very upset pure bred European wild boar!!!

Oh Lordy!!!

Remember our neighbours right across the road from us with the ostriches...

Well,their youngest son phoned Cules and told him he needs to sell his wild boars because he needs to buy himself a laptop!

Cules was more than happy to oblige...

These things are huge!

I think there is about 11 of them....

So much for my stallion! (for now)

The End