Pigs on the Lawn

There's no apparent logic in why sitting on a Suffolk lawn on a sunny summer morning should suddenly conjured up the memory of two pigs. Perhaps it was the heat - this picture of them was taken at siesta time on a very hot day in Namibia, at a camp called Okonjima which specialises in dealing with captured or injured big cats, returning some of them to the wild.

The warthogs were constantly round the visitor's rondavels, and often to be found....

....rooting around on the camp's carefully manicured lawns. While they kept their distance, humans didn't bother them.

I have a sneaking respect for warthogs. They are one of Nature's least beautiful beasts but they're plucky and canny. They have to be: they are a lion's favourite meal, so those teeth aren't there just for show.

In some villages in Tanzania warthogs are a common sight; in some they are never to be seen. The reason is simple.  The trick the hogs have is to know the religion of each village. The villagers in the former are Muslims who have no interest in pork, in the latter, Christians. Lions, the hogs know, are less likely to roam in places where there are humans.