The little fellow recovered rapidly; and, although on the first day after the amputation we had to put food down his throat, getting viciously punished by his needle-pointed bill and claws, on the second he took meat from our hands, eating voraciously as much as we would give him, and even coming after us for more; though, not having yet learned to steer himself under his altered circumstances, he hobbled in a very clumsy and crab-like fashion, now and then making futile efforts to fly, and tumbling down on his side. Soon, however, he learned to walk straight, and would follow us about like a little dog, with the quaintest short steps. He was soon tame and friendly with all but the meerkat, for which he showed great animosity, and on which he would jump spitefully—or perhaps hungrily?—whenever it came near him. Possibly, in a wild state, small animals of this kind were his natural prey. He did not object to Toto, who indeed—with the sole exception of his rival and arch-enemy Bobby—has never failed to get on well with all his heterogeneous companions.
Horus, debarred by his infirmity from active exercise, and condemned to a somewhat humdrum life, sought consolation in the pleasures of the table, and developed an enormous appetite. He shared the spoils of the mousetraps with Bobby, and would take raw and cooked meat from our hands with equal relish. Indeed I am afraid we overfed him, and induced apoplexy. At any rate, one evening as we sat reading after dinner, he dropped quietly from his perch, and died without a flutter.
The aasvogel, a repulsively ugly, bald-headed, bare-necked bird of the most pronounced vulture type, is very common in South Africa, especially in the regions where game is most plentiful. These denizens of the air seem to be perpetually hovering, on the watch for prey, at such immense heights as to be quite out of range of human vision; though their own keen sight enables them instantly to detect the prospect of a feed, and if an animal is killed, or even only wounded, they are at once aware of the fact, and, swooping down from their airy height, sail straight to the spot.
Perhaps you are a "new chum" out hunting, and you bring down an antelope. Although, at the moment of firing your shot, you would have been ready to take your affidavit that—
"No birds were flying overhead,
There were no birds to fly,"—
your game has hardly fallen before, far up in the grey-blue, a tiny speck appears, at first only just visible, but rapidly increasing in size; then another, and yet another floats into sight, "and still they come," till at last the heavens seem all alive with birds approaching from every direction, outlined against the cloudless sky in different degrees of size and clearness, according to perspective, but all making the straightest of bee-lines towards the wounded animal. In the Free State, where these birds are very numerous, T——, hunting on horseback, has sometimes found that before he could reach the spot where his antelope had fallen the aasvogels were already on it, and had commenced operations by plucking out the eyes, their special tit-bits.
These nastiest of birds think nothing of overeating themselves till their condition resembles that of Mark Twain's jumping frog after the famous dose of shot, and, when gorged after a good "square" meal, they are so heavy that they have to run a long way before they can rise into the air. On these occasions, if you are active and have a good long whip, you can catch them by switching the lash round their ugly, bare necks. But a little experience teaches you that this sport has its drawbacks, as the aasvogel invariably swarms with animal life of the most objectionable kind.
Owls are plentiful enough in the Karroo; so too are those other nocturnal birds, the goat-suckers, which at sundown begin to fly about, uttering their weird, plaintive cry. They are queer-looking birds, and seem all out of proportion, with a broad, short head and immensely wide bill, surrounded by stiff bristles like a cat's whiskers. On examining a specimen shot near our house, we were amused to find that, by looking into this preposterous bill, we could distinctly see the creature's eyes through the semi-transparent roof of the mouth.
Another of our feathered eccentricities, the butcher-bird, called by the colonists Jack Hanger, likes to eat his game high; and you often come across mimosa-bushes which, stuck all over with small birds, beetles, locusts, etc., impaled on the long, stiff thorns, form his well-stocked larder.