| For those of you who have not visited our
factory and offices, we should tell you that we have unusual position.
We are situated on Airports Company South Africa land along side the runway
in Port Elizabeth, which makes for noisy neighbours but gives us a pleasant
spacious view. On the otherside of our property is the end of a
township, where "illegal" squatters built the most rudimentary shacks. The
township "proper" has basic housing, but is very crowded and has high
unemployment. Part of the mission of Momento's is to create meaningful
employment.
When we built the new factory we left
about an acre undeveloped: the longer term idea being to create garden for
the pleasure of our employees, and eventually visitors - with tables and
seats. In the meantime we left the land untouched, basically a building
site. However nature took over and greenery emerged without any
assistance from anyone. Some of this was invasive weeds, which we
periodically removed, the result was a thick covering of FYNBOS,
the vegetation unique to the western side of South
Africa. In turn this led to other natural developments and we'd like
to share these with you.
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Despite the proximity
of noisy aircraft, and squalid housing we find we have been
"inhabited" by a number of animals. The smallest mammals we have are
striped mice. This type of fieldmouse is cute and attractive,
the only difficulty being a desire, in cold weather, to come inside
and snuggle into our stored blankets. We have to go to great
lengths to dissuade them.
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Yellow Mongoose
Frequent visitors are Mongooses, and we are lucky enough to have two
types around.
Water Mongoose |
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A recent friend is
Tamie (Shortened Xhosa for Lucky) who is a Leopard Tortoise - we
think female. Whilst tortoises are common throughout Africa, the
Leopard Tortoise in the Eastern Cape is special in that it reaches
much larger sizes than elsewhere in the world. We put a Coke
can alongside to give you an idea and as you can see she likes to
come inside the factory to look around on occasions.. |
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Although we do not have any resident we do occasionally see Snakes.
The most dangerous of these is the rather lazy Puffadder.
Other sightings have been Mole Snakes and Cape Cobras.
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| Puff Adder |
Cape Cobra |
Mole Snake |
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The pictures of snakes are taken from Bill
Branch's Field Guide to Snakes of Southern Africa |
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Port Elizabeth is meeting place for 4 differing biomes, this in
turn gives opportunities for a wide range of bird life
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Just
some of the plants that have appeared "from nowhere" |
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