| Boetie the
Rhodesian Ridgeback
by Elizabeth Akers, Rescue Coordinator
Boetie grew up in the veld of Africa. The grasses
were tall and made wonderful hiding areas for Boetie and his
brothers and sisters. They played, day after day, stalking
each other through the long grasses, chasing small rodents
from the hidey holes, and sometimes just simply lying in the
grass napping.
Boetie was the group's fearless leader. If there
was a koggelmander (agama lizard) in sight, it was always
Boetie who dared to get close. It never bothered him that
the koggelmander would flare out his red or bluefrill in an
attempt to frighten Boetie away. Boetie would just stare at
the lizard and with a curious frown, creasing his brow try
to put a paw onto the lizard to get a closer look. He never
quite made the connection, as the koggelmander would always
speed away from Boetie's paw and he would be left there alone,
creasing his brow even more.
He would sit and listen to the turtle doves
coo-coo-cooing. He would watch the little weaver birds hard
at work, weaving their intricate nests over the edge of the
river. His ouma (grandmother) had told him that the birds
built their almost impenetrable nests over water to keep out
the snakes. The cobras and boomslang (tree snake), as well
as other snakes had a difficult time trying to get inside
a weaver bird's nest to eat the baby birds there.
Sometimes Boetie would scratch at the surface
of an anthill that looked like a big black rock. He just wanted
to watch the ants scurrying about inside their home. He never
wanted to hurt them and they seemed to rebuild their anthill
very quickly.
Once he found a very pretty rock that was moving.
It had lovely colours and things that looked like legs and
a head and tail. When he put his nose out to sniff it, and
touched it with his paw, it came to a sudden stop. Boetie
was very surprised. His father, Dagga, told him that it was
just skilpad (tortoise), looking for food on his way home
and that skilpad would not hurt anyone.
Boetie loved to learn about the creatures and
plants that lived around him. He asked his ouma and oupa (grandfather)
often to tell him what suchand such was and where it lived
and what it ate. Oupa told him about trapsoetjies ("walk sweetly/softly"
the chameleon), who walked even more slowly than skilpad.
His eyes moved separately, and he could actually look forward
with his one eye and backwards with the other eye! Boetie
tried SO hard to make his eyes work that way but he could
not so.
When he played at the edge of the kopje (rocky
hill) close to his home, he enjoyed chasing the dassies (hyrax)
into the rocks. Sometimes he took one home for dinner, but
mostly he just enjoyed chasing them.
One day, while playing chase with the dassies,
he came face to face witha rinkhals cobra (spitting cobra).
Oh, my goodness, Boetie got such a fright! He froze as the
snake stretched its body upward. Before the snake could spit
its venom into Boetie's eyes, Boetie apologized and bowed
his head down onto his front paws. Rinky had been resting
after his midday meal and was too sleepy to bother much with
Boetie. He simply hissed that Boetie should be more careful
in the future and then he curled up and went back to sleep.
Boetie was so scared that he avoided that place for many months
afterwards.
In the heat of the afternoon, Boetie and his
brothers and sisters would watch the miskruiers (dung beetles)
hard at work rolling up big balls of elephant dung. These
beetles would be a fraction of the size of the huge round
ball they were pushing home and the pups enjoyed watchingthem.
They also played with the tok-tokkie (tapping beetles) beetles,
these pretty little brown beetles would scurry along, tapping
their bellies to the ground every now and then. The noise
they madefascinated Boetie, it went tok, tok, tok,tok, tok,
tok (perhaps that is why Ridgebacks do so well with clicker
training).
These are some of the creatures that shared
adventures with Boetie. Many of them helped Boetie, some of
them failed to give him warnings, and some of them helped
him get into trouble at times. Boetie and his siblings had
many adventures growing up on the veld of Africa.
NOTE: There is a certain amount of "poetic
licence" taken, as not all of the creatures in the Boetie
tales live in the same area.
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