Steve, Tobby the Spider and the Peppertick Family

After just a few days of life in the park, I already got a pet. Its name is Steve and he is a gecko. His favourite spot is top right corner of the curtain and he comes and goes whenever he feels like it. He responsible that my room stays spider- and insect-free and keeps me company while I work. He is a very clean, quiet and easy-to-take-care-of pet. I like Steve.

Maybe that’s why Tobby the Spider rather stays well hidden in a water tab. He is hidden so well that no one besides ground living creatures that keep their eyes turned towards the sky for some reason sees him. He made his webby house in one of the pipes for drinking water. In the one that the drinking water comes out. His silk is so finely woven that it resists the full gush of water flowing from the barrel through the pipe in the glass of a thirsty researcher, and keeps Tobby happy and dry on the other side. I don’t know if he stays well fed, but I guess juicy insects don’t hesitate to enter the tab for a drop of liquid after being exposed to the African sun for the whole day.

But neither of those hunters is cunning enough (or just doesn’t bother) to catch The Pepperticks. Their name is suggestive enough, and if you put them into a spice jar, labelled “ground pepper”, you would not check twice if pepper is the actual content. They are less than minute and they are numerous. Most likely they hang out in the tall grass where they wait for the dinner to pass by. The dinner of a human origin is their favoured choice. Researchers in the Dung Beetle Camp, including me, are coming back from the field full of those little monsters all over their legs and get bitten a little or a lot. Depends on the Peppertick’s appetite. Also, some of them are parasitized by a nasty Rickettsial bacteria that passes onto men and causes fever of various severities. African tick fever, it’s called.

But nothing to worry about, better to keep an eye on the grumpy buffalos and moody black rhinos and wash those little pepper-like things away as soon as you’re safely back from the field. And be kind to Tobby and Steve so that they stay nice in return.