STOEP CHAT

at Action Ads 20 July 2023

Dassie Goes Home

At last! The stowaway dassie is back home - thanks to four Garden Route women who were determined to help the creature and not simply kill it as some had suggested.

Stoep Chaerers will know from the last two columns that the young dassie must have sneaked into the car engine of Knysna resident Karen while she was vising Hout Bay a couple of weeks ago. The stowaway arrived unharmed in Knysna and would not budge from its new engine home except to come out and nibble grass and sit in the sun. If anyone approached, it shot back into the engine’s nooks and crannies.

Karen tried everything she could think of to get it out, to no avail.

Enter CAT Garden Route, a non-profit group based in the Wilderness that captures feral cats, sterilizes and releases them.

CAT founder Rita Brock said: “When Karen told us her story we thought: ‘Goodness, we must try to help’”

Uschi Peuckert from CAT went to Karen’s small holding in Knysna and set the trap near her car. She baited it with berries, apples and peanut buer. Then they waited and watched.

Nothing happened for about 20 minutes. I can imagine the dassie sing in the engine, smelling the delicious food and thinking: “Okay, what’s the catch here?”

It soon found out. It hopped out of the engine and into the cage and bam, the trap closed automacally behind it.

Karen was delighted, and off the dassie went to CAT.

“We kept it in a special cage and put a rock and concrete water trough in there and kept it in quaranne. Its eyes were clear and its poo was 100% what it should be. We put in some aromac leaves, grass and berries. Normally it would not have such luxury but we did not want the dassie to be stressed, and also wanted to give it good food because maybe it was not eang so well when it was living in the engine,” Rita said.

Karen wanted the dassie to go back to Hout Bay. Apparently if a dassie is released into a new colony, the territorial male will drive it out - and may even kill it.

How to get it home?

Karen and CAT put out calls on social media for a willing dassie transporter – and they found one: Herita MacDonald from the Wilderness, who was going to Cape Town with a friend.

So into a travelling box with apple and banana for padkos and off it went.

“It was so quiet in the car that we forgot about it,” Herita said. They drove to the Hout Bay market area where the dassie is assumed to have stowed away.

“I carried the crate into the bushes next to the river and opened it, but it didn’t want to get out, so I pped it and it ran off.”

Happy ending.

As I write this, a cold front is rolling into Cape Town, and I’m really hoping the young dassie is now reunited with its former colony and is snuggled down warm and safe.

Mmmm. Or is it sing there eyeing the next car?