Hi All
Over the course of the last few years, I have acquired both my dogs from the SPCA in Hatfield. One is a purebred German Shepherd (GSD), whilst the latest addition is a ginger-haired Cross Chow. Both are female, but they are so well suited to each other. When I greet them in the morning in the garden, each morning they start wrestling playfully with each other, full of “Joie di Vivre”.
With the weather this time of the year still being so great, I decided to take them along to the Mukuvisi Woodlands for an early morning walk on Sunday. It is so peaceful walking there in the heart of true Zimbabwean Miombo woodland with all the birds chirping away in the background. I’ve taken up a more committed interest in learning all about trees, and Mukuvisi has such a good representation of all the different leaf types.
The caretakers of this park have done such a good job of sustaining a typical Zimbabwean bushveld with some excellent specimens of Antelope, Giraffe, Zebra and many more Plains game. For those of you who have not been there before, you might note that there are about a dozen different walks that you can follow, ranging in distance from about 2 – 11km, absolutely no litter, far from the madding crowds and well away from the traffic. On the way back, I bumped into a few friends who had arrived a little later.
Those of you with young kids should take them along to see the cage full of Hamsters – so cute with lots of babies running alongside their Ma’s.
Their latest program involves an awareness campaign for Fungi that was implemented a few months ago by Cathy Sharp – the kind a thing that school kids should be shown for their Nature Study classes. Mukuvisi have all sorts of educational opportunities for introducing young children to our bush life, so if you have any influence on a school near you, why not suggest they take a day out of school and all head off to Mukuvisi for a real education.
When I was at junior school, in the early 60s, we were taken on monthly class tours visiting places like Dunlop Tyres, the local Fire Station, and the Merlin Blanket Factory. Do these tours still happen? Desi Hacker and her team at SPCA do a magnificent job of taking care of displaced dogs and cats, so the SPCA would make a good outing too. Ciao, Mike G.
