This is Nigel.
Nigel is a dik-dik, a tiny antelope that lives across East and Southern Africa. He lives at Acacia Hotel in Juba with his life partner, Madeline (dik-diks form permanent mating pairs). Madeline wasn't feeling the camera, but Nigel let me follow him around for awhile with my camera while he went about his life's work, eating every bush ever planted at Acacia.
He was a little shy at first.
But then he decided he rather liked being the center of attention.
Unfortunately, some other people saw that Nigel was working the camera and decided they wanted a piece of it. This included a 5-year-old little boy who stays at Acacia with his parents. He began to taunt Nigel. Nigel responded by using his horns to headbutt the kid in the knee, moderately gently but fairly authoritatively. This was my cue to go get a bottle of water at the bar. Little did I know that Nigel's reign of terror had only just begun.
I was sitting at the bar a few minutes later when I heard shrieking and looked up to see a woman who had started to take pictures as I was leaving hurling her shoes at poor Nigel, who was headbutting her over and over again--enough and hard enough to draw blood from a horn wound on her ankle. The woman took refuge on the front porch of one of the huts and I watched as Nigel ran crazily around the field and then retreated to the shade of a tree to pout Like all too many stars, life in the spotlight had tipped him over the edge. I drank my water from the safety of the restaurant.
But eventually I had to venture back to my friends and belongings by the pool. I looked carefully around and spotted Nigel still pouting under the tree. He looked like he was maybe dozing a bit, so I decided to make a break for it. Can we all see where this is going now? I began to make my way carefully across the patch of grass between the restaurant and the pool. Then, all of a sudden, out of the corner my eye, I spotted a very small and very angry dik-dik hurtling towards my lower calves with one thing on his mind: headbutt her, the one who started it all.
Imagining how I was possibly going to explain that injury to anyone (calf muscle impaled by horn?), I screamed like a little girl and sprinted across the grass, veering at the last minute onto the porch where Nigel's previous victim was sitting. Nigel was too enraged to catch the last minute direction change and hurtled off between the huts towards the tennis courts, leaving me at the mercy of a crowd of extremely amused bystanders.
He reappeared a few minutes later, about the same time my injured pride began to recover, and sulked around the grass for a bit, attempting to headbutt anybody who came near the grass. Eventually the manager of Acacia appeared and after several tries and some headbutts, picked up a cranky and struggling Nigel and carted him off to the corner of the property, presumably for some down time and a stern talking to.
Thus ended Nigel's reign of terror. For now.
Nigel is a dik-dik, a tiny antelope that lives across East and Southern Africa. He lives at Acacia Hotel in Juba with his life partner, Madeline (dik-diks form permanent mating pairs). Madeline wasn't feeling the camera, but Nigel let me follow him around for awhile with my camera while he went about his life's work, eating every bush ever planted at Acacia.
He was a little shy at first.
But then he decided he rather liked being the center of attention.
Unfortunately, some other people saw that Nigel was working the camera and decided they wanted a piece of it. This included a 5-year-old little boy who stays at Acacia with his parents. He began to taunt Nigel. Nigel responded by using his horns to headbutt the kid in the knee, moderately gently but fairly authoritatively. This was my cue to go get a bottle of water at the bar. Little did I know that Nigel's reign of terror had only just begun.
I was sitting at the bar a few minutes later when I heard shrieking and looked up to see a woman who had started to take pictures as I was leaving hurling her shoes at poor Nigel, who was headbutting her over and over again--enough and hard enough to draw blood from a horn wound on her ankle. The woman took refuge on the front porch of one of the huts and I watched as Nigel ran crazily around the field and then retreated to the shade of a tree to pout Like all too many stars, life in the spotlight had tipped him over the edge. I drank my water from the safety of the restaurant.
But eventually I had to venture back to my friends and belongings by the pool. I looked carefully around and spotted Nigel still pouting under the tree. He looked like he was maybe dozing a bit, so I decided to make a break for it. Can we all see where this is going now? I began to make my way carefully across the patch of grass between the restaurant and the pool. Then, all of a sudden, out of the corner my eye, I spotted a very small and very angry dik-dik hurtling towards my lower calves with one thing on his mind: headbutt her, the one who started it all.
Imagining how I was possibly going to explain that injury to anyone (calf muscle impaled by horn?), I screamed like a little girl and sprinted across the grass, veering at the last minute onto the porch where Nigel's previous victim was sitting. Nigel was too enraged to catch the last minute direction change and hurtled off between the huts towards the tennis courts, leaving me at the mercy of a crowd of extremely amused bystanders.
He reappeared a few minutes later, about the same time my injured pride began to recover, and sulked around the grass for a bit, attempting to headbutt anybody who came near the grass. Eventually the manager of Acacia appeared and after several tries and some headbutts, picked up a cranky and struggling Nigel and carted him off to the corner of the property, presumably for some down time and a stern talking to.
Thus ended Nigel's reign of terror. For now.
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