Scary, scarier, scariest...

In the series of "things to remind us we're in Africa", we had a stray dog wander into the compound yesterday afternoon. The first thing we knew about it was when Benjy called us to say that Eve had pointed it out to him. We hustled them inside the house - you can never be too careful with dogs here - and Marc managed to chase it out of our smaller compound into the outer, larger one.

Most dogs here will run if you throw a stone or wave a stick near them, but this one was acting weird, and that didn't exactly reassure us! It did seem to be trying to get out of the compound, but couldn't find the open gate. And instead of running away from us and therefore letting us herd it, it seemed entirely unimpressed by us. It sniffed around a locked gate at the other end of the compound, and then headed towards me where I was standing by the open gate to our little compound. As it got close, I waved a stick at it, and instead of running away, it ran straight towards the thrashing stick (and me!).

Not what I was expecting! I wouldn't generally act in a threatening manner towards a dog, but I was getting rather scared by its unpredictability, and tried to poke it away from me with the stick. It squealed, and dashed past me and through the gate back into the little compound. The kids were in the house, and so were safe - Benjy had even locked the door, which meant I couldn't get in! Marc opened the big gate between the two compounds, having opened the big one out of the other compound, and managed to get the dog (eventually) out of both.

I was quite shaken, though I had to smile at the following conversation:

Me: Wow - fire, snakes and then this!
Simon: Fire-snakes?
Me: No, fire comma snakes.
Benjy: What are fire comma snakes?

And you've guessed it, I do NOT have a photo of the stray dog!!