Dream assassins...

Its 4:30 am and I'm curled up fast asleep in my bed with two felines spooning at my feet, my husband away on call duty at the hospital. Images of last night's Roland Garros victory for Rafa are dancing across my dreams and I'm suddenly sitting court side at this year's final, about to watch the king of clay defend his title. The atmosphere is electric as the crowd anticipates nothing less than a showstopping performance by the two players who now enter the court and head to their seats. But mid-stride towards his bench, Rafa's eyes meet mine, and he pauses....then slowly turns and approaches my seat. The whole arena falls deathly silent as he leans over and whispers in my ear....

HA HA HADEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Yes, the unmistakable sound of that evil little bastard, Bostrychia hagedash - AKA, the Hadeda Ibis - penetrates my skull and obliterates any traces of slumber and blissful fantasies.

HA DEEEE DAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! DE DA, DE DAAAAAHH!!!!

Aaaarggh!!! So much for my sleep-in on my weekend off. How does he know that today is the first day in 2 weeks that I can sleep past 5:45am?!? Not only does he have sonic boom powers, but he's also bloody telepathic!

Now for those of you who don't have the pleasure of knowing what these animals are, I have provided a picture below. The bird on the left is commonly found throughout South Africa, whereas the one on the right can only be found in the Oak tree outside our bedroom window, before 5am, on weekend mornings.

Such is my loathing for these creatures that I am constantly trying to devise plans for their ultimate destruction. I am rather proud of my latest plan and I actually think this one may just work. It requires the cooperation of my handsome and ferocious ratter and small bird devourer, Mr Poenie Cat, who has (rather reluctantly) volunteered to take part in eradicating the Hadeda scourge from our back garden. Although I am not a very good artist, I have rendered below a basic schematic drawing of the proposed plan:

The CAT-erpault (patent pending)

You see, the idea is that, if Poenie is a good ratter, he MUST be good at killing Hadedas too. So with the element of surprise on our side, I think we can take those Mofo's down...