Weird Wild Life

Two weeks ago, I headed into Swakopmund, the small, tourist-heavy coastal city an hour or so from my small, industrial desert town for a bit of shopping and to lie on the beach.  Whilst engaged in the latter, glancing idly at the blue, blue Atlantic under its blue, blue sky, I noticed something large and dark and lumpy bumping on the wavelets.  Seaweed, maybe.  Or litter?  There's not a whole lot of litter on the Swakop beaches -- presumably that's all heading toward the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Then I thought, 'It actually looks a bit like a penguin,' which of course is silly since penguins don't live around here.

A desert ocean mirage?

Cutting out all the speculation and self-doubt, it was a penguin.  A dead penguin.  It rolled with the waves, back and forth, until eventually it beached up on the sand.  I gazed at it mournfully and respectfully for a while, then realized I might want proof of it, for my own skeptical memory if nothing else.  By the time I had rallied my energy to sit up straight, dig my camera from my pack, and get a shot framed, the waves had recaptured the body and rolled it back out again, so it was once more a vaguely animal-shaped lump on the water.  So I almost thought I'd imagined it; dreamed it; hallucinated it.  Mirages, after all, are one of the features of desert living.

But when I eventually realized that it was whatever o'clock and the shops start closing at 1:00pm on Saturdays and the taxis home get really scarce after 3:00pm, and I had better get moving if I expected to eat any fruit other than raisins in the next two or three weeks, I stood and started walking north along the surf line.  And I spotted another penguin, even further out, and very apparently dead.  And then I saw a few people gathered around a dark lump in the sand, and yes, it was a third dead penguin.  But why?  I have no idea.  There is a strong current, the Benguela Current, that sweeps north from the Cape of Good Hope along the southwest African coast, so maybe the dead penguins escaped from Antarctic waters and joined the Benguela?  It's much too big to be an African penguin.

Naturalists and wildlife lovers K&K think it's probably a seal, but cut me
slack on the i.d. as it's tricky with no size comparison.  Also I'm an idiot.

Anyway, I was sad as could be about the creatures I thought were penguins, but now think were seals.  Seriously.  To cheer myself, I thought about some of the other weird wild life I've encountered.  For instance, there are peacocks living near me; definitely not endemic to southwestern Africa.  Although, according to that link I just added, in addition to the green and blue peafowl found in and around India, there is "A more distinct and little-known species, the Congo peacock, [that] inhabits African rain forests."

So I thought it was all kinds of awesome to have a peacock nearby -- at a vo-tech school -- despite the irritation of its frequent shrieks.  However, I have learned that a lot of Namibian tourist lodges (country-style hotels) keep a few for decoration.  They've even got some in Khorixas, for heaven's sake.  When I get a better photo, I'll upgrade this one.  [Update: last week the peacock was even more moulted than in this shot.  It hardly ever shrieks anymore, either; and where is the other cock and the two hens?]

Sometimes it sits on the roof.  That's kind of cool.

Swakop also gets seagulls.

If you grew up in coastal New England, gulls aren't weird.
But I like to see them, so here they are for you.

Also in Swakop, there's these pretty little bright yellow birds that come sit on your table at Bojo's cafe and eat your crumbs.  If you're not assertive, they'll eat from your plate.

Pretty, but a bit pushy.

And here's a spider someone can identify for me, trapped in an Indian take-away container with the dead fly it was carrying away from the windowsill when I nabbed it.  I relocated both to the back-most part of the back yard, but the photos there are even iffier.

I mean, it's supposed to be clearing the house of *live* flies,
not just picking up the ones that are already dead.

My boss drove three clients and me through Etosha National Park in October, so there is plenty of wild life yet to come.  And actually, I'll try to remember to add the Thanksgiving snake to this post sometime in the next few days.  Update:  weeks later, here's the snake:

Probably a horned adder.  J saw it stretched out, and pointed it out to M.
They thought it might be dead, so M kicked sand toward it, from a respectful
distance, and it coiled itself.  A and Y and I joined, and we all looked at it
for a bit (respectfully distant), and M photographed it.  Then we walked on.
This may be the kind that bit H, requiring extensive cutting up of her foot
(where the bite landed) and up into her thigh as the poison traveled.

Stay tuned - lots more of these ahead.