Before I left Zimbabwe I lived in a beautiful house on the banks of Mazwikadei, a large lake which serviced our farmer neighbours. Being in a rural area we often had wildlife in the garden; kudu, duiker, genet and the odd wild cat.

Once a farmer’s cattle roamed into the garden, creating quite a stir with the dogs – and with First Born. He had just got home from school when I heard him calling from his bedroom:

“Muuum! We have too many animals in this house already! What have you gone and bought now?” I looked out of the window to see what he was talking about: But the most unusual and disturbing visit by far occurred in the middle of a cold winter’s night.  The boys and I were alone in the house (their Father was away) and I had all the dogs inside – for our protection and for their warmth.

At about 2am the dogs woke me, barking frantically to be let out. I could see nothing obviously threatening through the window so I opened the door and was nearly knocked off my feet in the dogs’ desperate scramble to get outside. They tore off to the water’s edge, still barking and snarling and then suddenly went silent. There was a quiet whimper, a thunder of feet on the lawn and they all tore back towards the house, and me.  By now I was standing barefoot on the grass, a few feet from the front door and in an instant all the dogs were huddled behind me, shaking and whining and peering around me towards the water. These were not all small dogs – two Great Danes, a couple of Labrador-sized rescue dogs and a miniature poodle – we must have made an amusing sight, had anyone been around to witness this.

It was very dark and I could see nothing but then a sound began to register – a strange shuffling noise accompanied by a scrunching, scraping noise which I could not identify. The noise stopped for a moment, everything went quiet and I took the opportunity to dash back into the house, dogs close on my heels, to fetch a torch. Armed with some light we all ventured back into the garden and I crept as close to the water as I dared, shining the torch in all directions and looking for Goodness knows what.

The scrunching began again, I flashed the light towards the noise and saw two specks of light – about a foot apart – that seemed to be dancing in time to the scraping, a few feet above the ground. My blood ran cold and every hair on my body stood up. My legs became dead weights and for a minute or two I was rooted to the spot, unable to move, think, react. What alien being was this?

Then one of the dogs growled, the light specks stopped moving and in a moment a large, grey shape came into focus.

Not someone you would want to bump into in the middle of the night

We were looking at a hippo making a midnight feast of the long grass growing on the edge of the dam in the front garden!

Both boys slept through the excitement but I wish I had woken them up. This was the first sighting of a hippo in our lake and no one believed my story – I took no photographs and for a long time jokes were made about ‘pink hippos’ and alcohol.

A few days later I was vindicated when the hippo appeared in the bay in broad daylight. The dogs were a lot braver this time around. The hippo hung around for a few more days and then disappeared forever.

This is my first entry into Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge.

“Odd Ball Photos are those great photos that you take which really don’t seem to fit into a common category.  We’ve all taken them and like them, because we just can’t hit delete and get rid of them.  There is never a theme to this challenge, so what is an odd ball is all up to discover and photograph.”

I’ve always loved the first photo, of the cattle in the garden (it is a scanned copy and unfortunately I have lost the original) and thought it would fit nicely into this challenge. And it is pretty odd to have cattle gazing at you from your front garden.