4 women and a compound: Episode 3: "Critters threaten coup"

highways of biting ants.  Need I say more?  I think not, but I will anyways.

Impali are NOT our friends.  They travel in highways made up of themselves - thousands upon thousands of them in a river undulating with crawling ants.  Yich.  It's rainy season, and I guess they like that.

It's 4 am, and I've gotta go to the bathroom.  I drag myself out of bed, futzing around next to my bed trying to find my headlamp, then wander out of the house and across the compound to the latrine.  Somewhere in the "across the compound" portion, I must have put a foot in or near one of their highways.  The only way I knew was that suddenly as I approached the latrine, I begin getting bites on my legs inside my PJ pants...I'm now a bit more awake than I'd like to be, yelping and "oo, ee, ai!"ing the rest of the way to the latrine and a bit fearful of the extent of my interruption of their movement...I have been in rooms with people who, having just come in from  outside, have suddenly dropped their drawers while yelping and slapping their legs and jumping around while being bitten all over by impali.  So, I take care of my latrine business as quickly as I can and return to my house with my headlamp pealed for the impali highway I must have disrupted.  Noting it, I managed, this time, to step over it and move as quickly as my sleepy self could carry me into my house.  Still not quite willing to wake all the way up, I decide that PJ pants are pretty optional in the sleeping process and especially when they have biting ants inside them, so I dropped them as soon as I entered and climbed right back into my bed.  Before I fell back to sleep I heard Larissa get up on the other side of the wall and decided that the roommate-ly thing to do would be to warn her about the impali on the way to the latrine - she seemed to appreciate the warning.

That was last week.  Yesterday, around bedtime, the impali were threatening to take over the team house, this time, also in Melissa's pants.  She used the pantry as her changing room as she tried to find the culprits.  I emptied one of our 2 cans of doom in the doorway and they seemed sufficiently intimidated, which I was thankful for.  "Take THAT!" impali.  We have one more type of ammunition in that arsenal, kerosene and water that gets poured as a wall around whatever you want to keep them out of.  I like still having another option for the next time they strike...

The threatened impali coup yesterday followed on the heels of the lovely black lab puppy's threatened coup only a few hours earlier.  The dinner bell had rung, I was waiting with my hot minestrone soup for everyone to gather.  "Heidi, did *you* let him out?!" Melissa hollers from outside.  "Let who out?" I immediately responded, and before the words were finished coming out of my mouth I knew what she meant.  Sirius must be on the loose.  We've been back on the compound no more than 11 days and maybe we were getting a little too used to not having him tearing through newly planted gardens, sitting his muddy rear/paws on clean chairs, tearing holes in our skirts, sitting in the neighbor's dish water basins...he was in his pen and being cared for by John's friend coming everyday to put food and water out and such.  Just when we had let our guard down a bit, he came tearing through the compound in the rain, a muddy mess.  "No, I didn't let him out."  Bethany went down to see how he may have managed to get out of his pen.  I decided the only way we were gonna get him back in was to pick him up and carry him down there.  In the protection of my rain coat, I picked him up and moved as quickly as I could down to his pen.  Bethany was sure he hadn't gotten out the door somehow, and after we put him back in and tied the door especially securely, we noticed that the cinder blocks stacked next to john's house at the end of the dog's fencing were pushed to the side and the fencing was curled back.  As we inspect how we might repair it, just when we thought he didn't have any new tricks, he jumped the full height of the fence, almost freeing himself again.  I used the fencing to secure the cinder blocks, but if this dog can jump the fence, we are flat out of luck...we checked and double checked everything and walked back to the team house anticipating our meal of hot soup.  Before we even reached the team house we heard "ba dump - ba dump, ba dump - ba dump" behind us and there he was dashing past us heading for the team house - looking back at us once as if to say "ha! take that!"

Melissa and Larissa come out, Larissa fuming due to further damage to her garden in the process of his tearing around the compound in his few minutes of freedom before we figured out he was out.  The 4 of us head down to the pen and scheme about how best to secure the place - preventing all further escape artist demonstrations.  In the end it involved bamboo poles, fencing, cinder blocks and in the end chaining his collar to the fence and tying the door closed in 2 places.  We all walk away slowly, all pausing at the same time to look back at the black eyes looking yet hopefully back at us, "Take THAT!" we said, hoodlum arm motions and all. "4 women and a COMPOUND" Larissa said to caption off our efforts.