MY MOM WAS ALMOST BURNED ALIVE

AGE – 3

The areas we had to travel to catch Oxpeckers were very remote, underdeveloped and filled with dangerous pitfalls. The only place Oxpeckers were thriving was in villages where the vets could not reach to distribute pesticides.  Here people relied on Oxpeckers to keep their cattle free of ticks and other parasites.  

One of the reasons, why others before had failed to keep Oxpeckers alive in captivity is that they kept them in small cages away from animals. My mom soon realized; she had to keep track of birds and travel around with the birds on an animal to avoid stress for the birds.  She built an aviary on a trailer and hired a donkey from the local village to keep the birds company.  Imagine what the locals thought of this woman riding around in a 4x4 dragging a trailer with a donkey behind her. Luckily we never tried riding the donkey.  A few years later we found out that could have been the end of us.  Any women in that area that rides a donkey was considered a witch or a witch doctor and this could result in getting burned alive. 

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