Assault on the allies

Recently some friends of the family visited and brought three motion-censored cameras for Nani, Chris, and the boys.  They are an older couple and used to live nearby in Tanzania but have since relocated to the states after they lost their land resulting from an argument with their village.  A year or so ago they decided to buy some of these cameras for themselves to track the animals in their area, however since they now live in Tucson, Arizona (only about a half hour from the border) they largely ended up with pictures of illegal immigrants passing through with the occasional bird or small mammal.  Nonetheless, they thought it would be really neat for around here and the boys couldn’t wait to get their hands on one, already having scoped out numerous places to put it.  I have to say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them too, and putting up the cameras at dusk has become sort of a ritual around here; last thing before sunset and first thing in the morning the cameras are put up and taken down.  I always look forward to the boys running to school in the morning and telling me what pictures they got during the night: bushbuck, dik-dik, bushpig, anteater, aardvark, civet, what have you.  But if things went according to plan they’d be boring.

            On the third day of having the cameras the boys came panting into my house, barging in on the middle of my breakfast and frantically shouting over each other. 

“Did you get the camera this morning?” Dylan finally asked.

They had gone to get theirs on the way to school where we had placed it the evening before on a tree near a waterhole roughly 100 yards from my house. 

“The camera is gone,” he continued.

But sadly I hadn’t gone anywhere that morning which could only mean one thing: someone (or something) had stolen the camera. 

We searched everywhere, looking for traces and clues, and thought about every possible way it could have disappeared.  The only viable explanation seemed to be that one of the cowherders or village kids gathering grass must have seen it and stolen it.   We knew they had passed there in the morning from seeing tracks and half-eaten palm nuts, but Chris and Nani allow anyone to pass through their land and who’s to say how many people could have come though by 9 in the morning.  Whoever it was, we knew it would be near impossible to catch them, but I was trying to remain optimistic for the boys and tried to convince myself that Nani had retrieved it earlier and was hiding it to play a trick on the boys to teach them a lesson about taking care of their things.  Still, I knew the chances of this were slim to none. 

Disappointed and defeated we headed back to school and attempted to concentrate.  I fittingly changed the Word of the Day to “distraught”. 

I texted Chris and Nani to ask if they had heard anything but as Murphy would have it, the texts didn’t go through and the first they heard of the camera’s disappearance was when we headed over to their house after school.  They were really disappointed and couldn’t imagine why someone had stolen it, but agreed that was probably the case.  What angered them most was that without a computer or another camera, it has absolutely no use to anyone.  Besides the fact it was $150 down the drain… Chris quickly got all his workers to ask around, but they were just as clueless as the rest of us.  They brought some farmers and cow herders in for questioning and Chris was even about to call the police. 

Nani had gone out to look for herself and see if she could do a better job than the boys and I had.  Amidst all the chaos, she came running back. 

“I’ve got our thief,” she shouted.

About 10 yards from where the camera was securely tied to a tree stump the night before she found about half of the camera completely chewed up.  For the next few yards the pieces were scattered about.  We put the chip into the computer and there she was. 

At 2:00am, the pictures show a beautiful striped hyena approaching the water hole, then walking towards the camera and, alas, approaching it from only inches away.  The next series of pictures and white light, whiskers, and grass.  The camera was completely ruined, but at least the chip stayed intact. 

What a day.  At least it wasn’t a person who had stolen it, but I felt bad that we had accused so many people and in the end it was just another animal revolting.  It appears to me as if this little game against the animals has widened.  At least I now have an allied front.