Growing Up in Africa: Rabbit for Dinner

Then disaster struck, we awoke one night to a terrible squealing and hissing and when my mother ran into the garden with a broom and a torch, she discovered that the 22 rabbits were now only 21. An investigation was launched, but no culprit could be found. The next night the same thing, 21 became 20. We were distraught. By luck a friend of the family came to visit, the local game keeper who worked on the reserve. His job was mostly to track poachers but he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the local wildlife and after examining the crime scene and sifting through the evidence, he declared his conclusion – Civet cats.

Wild cats, larger than the domestic moggy, but still small compared to other forms of African predators. Greatly relieved to know what we were dealing with, we put some boards over the open part of the cage and my mother set a trap!

She locked the rabbits back in the cage and then used the boards to create a tunnel with a swinging door on one end. Then with a piece of cooked chicken from the evening meal she baited the trap. Back in the house she aimed her bedside lamp through the window onto the rabbit hutch, put her sturdiest broom by the bedside and lay down to wait for the cats.

She didn’t have too long to wait, a couple of hours after sundown, she was woken from her snoozing by a terrible squealing and scratching. Not waiting to check what it was, she leaped out of bed, flipped the light on and ran shouting at the top of her voice whilst wildly swinging the broom. Across the veranda, over the grass to the swinging door of the trap. But as she got there a sense of unease started to prickly her. She looked down at the cage, it was in ruins, boards ripped apart, chicken wire mangled. She looked up, the darkness now seeming very thick and threatening. She reached for the torch in her dressing gown pocket, pressing the button the light stabbed out into the dark. Twelve, glowing eyes reflected back at her. Not small cat like eyes, but large, round eyes, several feet off the floor. She screamed! A large pack of hyenas, blood from the recently devoured rabbits wetting their muzzles, grinned back at her. With another deafening shriek she dashed for the house, rabbits, civet cats and broom forgotten.

The next morning after carefully checking the surrounding area from the safety of the house, we examined the wreckage. Of the rabbits there was no sign, 21 had become none. The cage itself was just so much matchwood and the broom and the torch that my mother had dropped were lying in splintered pieces on the ground.

We never did keep rabbits after that, and my mother was always very careful when leaving the house after dark to check carefully from the safety of the doorway before venturing out.

This is a true story told to me and my brothers and sisters many times since our return from Uganda. If you would like to hear more, leave a comment and I will oblige.