When the birds are savage—quei, as the Dutch call it—they become very aggressive, and it is impossible to walk about the camps unless armed with a weapon of defence called a "tackey." This is simply a long and stout branch of mimosa, with the thorns all left on at the end. It seems but a feeble protection against a foe who, with one stroke of his immensely powerful leg, can easily kill a man; the kick, no less violent than that of a horse, being rendered infinitely more dangerous by the formidable claw with which the foot is armed. Those, however, who are well practised in the use of the tackey are able, with the coolness of Spanish bull-fighters, to stand and await the charge of the terrible assailant. They allow him to come to what, to the inexperienced eye, seem unpleasantly close quarters; then, just as he prepares to strike, the tackey is boldly thrust into his face. The thorns oblige him to close his eyes, and he can only run blindly forward; the bearer of the tackey springing on one side, and gaining time to proceed some distance on his way, before the silly bird has recovered from his bewilderment and makes a fresh charge, when the weapon is again presented.
Fortunately, you are never assailed by more than one ostrich at a time; for in the large camps of some two thousand acres each—in which the birds are not fenced off in pairs, but live almost in the freedom of wild creatures—each one has his own domain, separated from those of others by some imaginary boundary-line of his own, visible only to himself, but as clearly marked out as the beat of a London policeman. There, in company with one or perhaps two hens, he dwells monarch of all he surveys; any other ostrich daring to invade his territory is at once attacked; and the human intruder is closely followed, his tackey in constant requisition, until the feathered lord of the land has seen him safely off the premises. Immediately after thus speeding the parting guest, the most savage bird is quite harmless; he dismisses you from his thoughts, and walks quietly back, feeding as he goes. And in the distance you see the head and long neck of his neighbour, whose kingdom you have now entered, and whose sharp eyes spied you out the instant your foot crossed his frontier. He now advances towards you with jerky, spasmodic movements, as if he were bowing you a welcome; this, however, is far from his thoughts, and after sitting down once or twice to give you his challenge—whereby he hopes you will be intimidated—he trots up defiantly, and the tackey's services are again required. Thus, during a morning's walk through the camps, you may be escorted in succession by four or five vicious birds, all determined to have your life if possible, yet held completely in check by a few mimosa thorns.
When an ostrich challenges he sits down; and, flapping each broad wing alternately, inflates his neck, and throws his head back, rolling it from side to side, and with each roll striking the back of his head against his bony body with so sharp and resounding a blow that a severe headache seems likely to be the result.
A person on horseback is even more obnoxious to the ostriches than a pedestrian; and a ride through the camps enables one to realize how true to life is the description, in the Book of Job, of a vicious bird: "What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider." The creature, when preparing for an attack, draws itself up, stands on tiptoe, stretches its neck to the full extent, and really seems to gain several feet in height. And, indeed, it does its best to knock you off your horse. T—— once saw a man riding as desperately as Tam O'Shanter, with an ostrich in close pursuit. It kept up with him, helping his horse along with an occasional well-placed kick; while the unhappy rider, hoping to intimidate his assailant, was again and again firing off his revolver into the air, but without effect.
As the new arrival in a country subject to earthquakes begins by thinking very lightly of these disturbances, but finds his appreciation of their importance increase with every successive shock; so the new chum in South Africa, inclined at first to look with contempt on the precautions taken against savage ostriches, learns in time to have a proper respect for the foolish, innocent-looking creatures, whose soft, dark-brown eyes look at him so mildly (when he is on the right side of the fence) that he finds it impossible to believe the stories told him of their wickedness, and nothing but a closer acquaintance can undeceive him. On one of the farms a sturdy new-comer, six feet in height, starting for an early morning walk, was cautioned against going into a certain camp where the ostriches were dangerous. He laughed at his friends' advice, told them he was "not afraid of a dicky-bird!" and—disdaining the proffered tackey—started off straightway in the forbidden direction. He did not return home to dinner; a search was made for him; and eventually he was found, perched up on a high ironstone boulder; just out of reach of a large ostrich, which was doing sentry, walking up and down, and keeping a vicious eye on him. There he had sat for hours, nearly roasted alive (ironstone boulders in the Karroo can get so hot in the sun that it blisters your hand to touch them); and there he would have had to sit till sundown, had not the timely appearance of his friends relieved him of the too-pressing attentions of the "dicky-bird."
Another gentleman had a theory that any creature, however savage, could be subdued—"quelled," as he said—by the human eye. One day he tried to quell one of his own ostriches; with the result that he was presently found by T—— in a very pitiable predicament, lying flat on the ground; while the subject of his experiment jumped up and down on him, occasionally varying the treatment by sitting on him.
T—— once bought an ostrich which had killed two men; and which, although an unusually fine bird, was, on account of its evil reputation, sold to him for a very low price. Ostriches appear to have a strong aversion to all the negro race. They attack Kaffirs and Hottentots much more readily than they do their white masters; and although—as has just been seen—they are very far from showing that amount of respect for the latter which is desirable, they seem—except during the breeding season—to stand in some sort of awe of a white man as compared with the "niggers," for whom they have the deepest contempt.
They are uncertain, too, and take sudden and unaccountable dislikes. One poor Kaffir woman, coming up to work at the house, was attacked, inside the gate, by one of the tame old ostriches, which—looking out for scraps thrown from the kitchen, stealing the fowls' food, or now and then picking up and swallowing a delicious piece of soap left for an unguarded moment on the washing-machine—prowled about round the house, and of which no one had ever dreamed of being afraid. Her solitary and scanty skirt, torn from the top to the bottom, showed how narrow had been her escape; and she looked livid under her dark skin, as she came in to ask me for needle and thread to repair the rent.
It has several times happened that one of our herds, in danger of his life, has been obliged, in self-defence, to kill a vicious ostrich; and, the finest and most promising birds—naturally the most savage—being invariably the victims, the loss is always a serious one. It is indeed no small trial, when, perhaps just as you are comfortably seated at the breakfast table, the black face of "April," "August," or "September"—fraught with bad news, and looking very frightened and ashamed—is suddenly thrust in at the door; and, with much rolling of white eyeballs, a tragic tale is told, in the most dismal of voices, and with many harrowing details, of how "Red Wing" or "White Neck" was quei, and attacked the narrator up in the big camp; with the sad consequence that you are now minus one of the best birds on the farm. But the poor fellow cannot be blamed or fined for defending his life; orders are given to pluck and bring down the unfortunate bird's feathers—the last he will ever yield—and somehow a dead bird's plumes always seem the most beautiful—
"And then to breakfast, with