You know the one. White heart-face in the torch beam. Big black eyes. It screams instead of hooting and crosses the werf without a sound. Nonnetjie-uil. Sephooko. Isikhova. Too many of us still call it bad news. It is a rat-catcher — the best in this district — and it never sends an invoice. That face is a dish. The ears sit at different heights. Roger Payne put barn owls in a dark room: they still hit the mouse, off by less than one degree. Bosiu, and it does not miss. Comb, velvet, fringe on the feathers: it flies quiet so it can hear the rat, and so the rat never hears it. It sleeps in a ruin because we cut the hollow trees. It works at night because that is when rats work.
The Free State grows 41 out of every 100 bags of mielies in this country. Villiers silos hold 273 000 tons. Rodents take 16% in the field and another 8% in storage. Open a pellet: vlei rats, multimammate mice, almost nothing else. A pair with chicks takes well over a thousand a year — every one on its way to your poone. So a man buys gif. The sick rat is the easiest on the plaas to catch. Brodifacoum, bromadiolone — read the box — sits in the liver for months. Cape Town caracals: 92% had rat poison inside. Next season you have no owls, faster rats, some now resistant. You pay again.
An owl on the roof was taught as death, or boloi. That is not a silly belief. Ask the children in Alexandra and Soweto. Kelly Sekgota arrived scared of the witchcraft stories and left deciding they were friendly. Sixty-three schools. Ask those kids what an owl is: it eats rats. Stand close enough, and the story falls off. One untreated pine box. One hole. Three to five metres up, over open veld. About R650, less if Oupa still has his saw. Wait. They will move in. The wise owl on Greek money was a different bird. This one weighs a can of cooldrink, and it is very, very good at one job. Mafube means the dawning of a new day. The nonnetjie-uil has been working all night to get us there.
The best one in this district, and it never sends an invoice.
