Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge (Day 2): A likely tale

Tags

beach, dog, family, ocean

Thanks once again to Far Out In Africa who invited me to take part in the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge. You should really check out this blog – if you haven’t done so yet, you are missing out big time!

The rules of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge and my reasons for honouring bloggers living in and writing about Africa is explained in my Day 1 entry No legs needed to fish.

Today I would like to nominate a lady who currently lives in Ghana, but also has her heart firmly enmeshed in the beautiful country of Namibia. I especially enjoy her tales and pictures of the daily lives of women in Africa. Please visit her site Thulana and enjoy.

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My Day Two entry for this challenge:

Yesterday, as is our usual routine, Dad and I had a little nap after lunch. The best time of the day to go to the beach in order to collect shells, is when the water is low and yesterday low tide was around lunch time. No surprise then that while we were stretched out on the couch, the two women did a disappearing act.

Even in Paradise there are dangers lurking everywhere and Dad has put some very strict rules into place, to be observed at all times when we go out on our daily walk. Of course, having given me the slip, the women had no one handy to remind them of the rules … and they broke every single one. Dad noticed that the moment he woke up.

Rule 1: The Dog must be on watch. Rule 1 broken.

Rule 2: Always stay within sight on the beach. We live high on a hill and from our balcony, we can can see a very long stretch of beach, but as you can see below, the beach was deserted. No tick next to Rule 2.

Rule 3: Always carry a fully charged cell phone when leaving the house. Yes, well … the two fully charged cell phones lying on the coffee table were witness to the fact that Rule 3 was not observed.

Rule 4: Never, under any circumstances, stay away for longer than two hours at a time. So when the two culprits walked in more than three hours after the event of low tide, an explanation was asked for.

Sissy, obviously appointed as spokesperson, hastened to explain that they walked a little further than planned, because the shell harvest proved to be very successful. They .. sort of … well, wandered off around the bend to inspect the boulders where the seagulls drop the mussels on the boulders to break open their shells. This was well worth watching for a few minutes.

“A few minutes”, says Dad. Yes, and then they felt a bit tired and sat down on a tree trunk to have a drink of water (well, well, they actually managed to adhere to Rule 5: Always carry a bottle of water.)

“Oh”, says Dad. Just that. Oh.

Yes, explains Mom, now taking over where Sissy left off. Then they saw something move under a bush and upon closer inspection, they found a common garden snake in obvious distress. The poor thing was in labour and the women tried to help out by delivering the little snake. Mom produced the evidence in the form of a very small baby snake. Stillborn. Such a shame.

So, Mom loftily declared, we’d better go and have a shower to wash off the trials and tribulations of the afternoon.

“You know Genis,” Dad says, “That must have been a very difficult labour.” I knew exactly what Dad meant; that little snake has very obviously been dead for more than a day. Or maybe two days. I just looked at Dad, waiting for the explosion.

But Dad just winked at me: “Genis, a very wise man once said ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’.” I nodded in agreement; Mark Twain was indeed no fool.

Knowing my dad, though, I knew that we would get to the bottom of the snake-in-labour story eventually, and This Dog is never wrong.

Later that evening we heard the women giggling from their study hide-out and what did we see (or rather, WHO did we see) on the computer screen when we sneaked in? None other than The Next Karate Kid herself. There was the explanation for the time spent Lost in Paradise – two grown women playing silly games in the sun and losing track of time.