STOEP CHAT

at Action Ads 13 July 2023

Engine Dassie: Chapter 2

The dassie is sll there.

Snug in Karen’s car engine, it shows no sign of leaving.

As I wrote last week, Karen parked her car at Noetzie for two days in the hopes that the surrounding peace and quiet, plus the indigenous forest, fynbos and cliffs, would be enough to ence the fluffy creature to leave the car and make a new home in the wild.

No such thing. This lile dassie, a stowaway that travelled from Cape Town to Knysna in Karen’s car engine, seems to know a good thing when it sees it and appears to have decided that the engine provides a nice metal “cave” home. Who needs rocks?

“We checked before we le Noetzie, opened the bonnet and there it was, sing on the engine,” said Karen.

She drove home – with the dassie in the engine - and tried to come up with another soluon.

Someone suggested pung those pink urinal cakes in the engine, the ones used to combat the smell in men’s urinals. Apparently the smell is guaranteed to drive small mammals away

But Karen has reservaons.

“If it does work it would flush it out onto my property, and I don’t want to do that.”

Karen, who lives on a smallholding, says the surroundings are not good for a dassie home, no rocky krantzes or cliffs.

Some have suggested trying to kill the dassie, but she doesn’t want to do that either.

“Now that I have seen it out of the car, it is definitely a youngster Now I feel even more sorry for it.”

For those who did not read last week’s Stoep Chat, Karen thinks the dassie must have got into her car engine when she and her husband were vising Hout Bay in Cape Town.

The first me they saw the dassie was on July 1st, when Karen’s husband opened the bonnet at the petrol staon to check the oil and water before starng the journey home. There it was, sing on the engine.

It quickly ducked away, so they assumed it had got out underneath and run off. Imagine their astonishment when they got to Knysna, opened the bonnet, and there was the dassie.

Several hours and 500km later it was fine. The dassie does not sck around once the bonnet is opened, but darts down into the engine that provides many nooks and crannies for it to hide.

Karen has been at home with flu for a few days, so has had lots of me to watch the dassie.

“It hops out as soon as the sun is shining to get warm, then finds some nearby grass to eat. The slightest movement makes it run straight back to the car.”

So what now?

Well, one of the Knysna vets has put Karen in touch with a woman in the Wilderness who has successfully trapped feral cats in a specialised cage.

Karen has contacted her.

“She said she has never tried to catch a dassie before, but she is coming to set up the trap. So we’ll wait and see what this week brings.”

And the best dassie bait? Peanut buer.