Part of the Pride Read Online Free

shuttled the birds, one at a time.
    I started breeding the birds and found that I loved it. I would spend hours with my pigeons in the
hok
. Sometimes I would even sleep in there. My mom wasn’t too charmed by this, but I found the whole experience of life in the
hok
to be amazing. I would sit patiently beside a mother while she was sitting on her eggs and calculate the days remaining until the chicks would hatch. I was like an expectant father, although it wasn’t enough for me just to watch the females and wait for their eggs to hatch—I wanted to be a part of their lives.
    â€œCome on, kick one out. Let me raise one,” I would plead with the nesting mothers. It often happened that when a pigeon had two eggs the mother would favor the stronger and fitter of the two offspring. I would take the frail one and try and bring it up, feeding it and nurturing it to full strength.
    Where there are pigeons, of course, there are also mice and rats. The rodents came to the
hok
in search of bird feed and eggs that had been kicked out. The mice bred under the bricks beneath the
hok
, and if I took a brick out of the floor I could look in and see a whole family of mice with their little pinkies—their babies. I had my own mini ecosystem happening in there and it was fascinating.As my father’s drinking worsened and things became tougher inside the house, the pigeon
hok
became my refuge.
    If the
hok
was my alternative home, then the backyard was my game reserve. I was always mucking about in the drain or digging up crickets or earthworms—anything I could get my hands on. As a child, you want to catch and collect things and keep everything in a box, and not let anything escape.
    One of the few occasions our family escaped Orange Grove was to visit my uncle in Fourways on the northern side of Johannesburg, not far from where I eventually ended up working at the Lion Park. It always seemed like a hell of a trip, for which we’d have to pack, even though it was usually just for a day. I was incredibly jealous of my uncle, because he had a pond and frogs in his garden. I was fascinated by my birds and the other household pets, but frogs—amphibians—represented a whole new subset of the animal kingdom.
    On one visit my uncle said I could take a frog home with me and I thought he was the best uncle in the world. I was easily impressed. I named my small frog
Paddatjie
, which is Afrikaans for small frog. Okay, so I was never terribly imaginative with names, although once TV took hold in our house there was a spate of celebrity naming. The American soap opera
Dallas
was the top rated program in South Africa at the time, so our African Grey Parrot was named J.R. after Larry Hagman’s character, J.R. Ewing. I also had a gaudy lovebird called Madonna.
    Paddatjie
was a leopard toad, as common as crap, but I was in awe because I thought I had discovered a totally new species of toads. I made him a little terrarium, decorated with the sorts of accessories I thought a frog would like. I used a cardboard box and even though I covered it, he was able to knock the lid off and jump out. He would leap through the house, and at the time I thought he was a particularly smart and tough guy, being able to avoid being eaten by our pack of dogs and pride of household cats. With thebenefit of a bit of education, I now reckon they all probably had a good taste of
Paddatjie
at one time or another, and, finding him thoroughly unpalatable, spat him out.
    I was convinced that
Paddatjie
recognized me as his friend and would escape from his box in order to find me and watch
Dallas
with me and my parrot, J.R. Ewing. I think I managed to convince my family of this, too, and they were no doubt impressed with my way with wild creatures from a very early age. I used to catch insects for the frog’s dinner and take him for walks in the garden to give him a taste of the great outdoors, rather than spending all his days as a caged,