Animals

The weather is mostly nice. Occasionally the wind gets strong enough to pick up the dust. This can sandblast unprotected legs and gets in your eyes. In the motorhome, we get a deposit of dust throughout the vehicle. If we shut the windows, the interior gets intolerably hot and stuffy. On very windy evenings, we need to vacuum out the bed before we turn in. So far, it has not been too hot. The cool sea moderates the temperature. There is usually a pleasant sea breeze. At night, it cools off to 17°C or so. Meanwhile some of the other places we have been are getting hot. Zagora is 37°C today and Atar, in Mauritania, is 43°C.  

I have been trying to photograph some of the animals around the campsite. As well as dogs and birds, there are snakes, lizards, scorpions and many beetles. Not seen any snakes here yet but found a lovely scorpion this morning.

  • Fluffy the campsite donkey

There are many dogs on the campsite. A few belong to campers but most of them are strays that run around scrounging food. Most of the people here are quite tolerant of the vagrant canines. The dogs are petted, fed and allowed to sleep by the campervans. Cent is less keen and will warn them off when they wander too close. I am happy for him to do this because, much as I like dogs, these particular dogs are a bit of a problem. Some of them have ear tags indicating they have been vaccinated. This helps prevent the spread of rabies but the disease continues to be endemic in Morocco. Rabies is a virus transmitted in the saliva of dogs. It is viscous. Symptoms may take months or even years to develop at which stage you are assured an extraordinarily painful and unpleasant death. The stray dogs defecate all over the campsite. Dog poos may a wide range of zoonoses, pathogens and parasites that transmit diseases to humans. The list of nasties is long and disturbing. It includes gastroenteritis, MRSA, salmonella, toxocariasis and scabies. Children, of which there are several on the campsite, are especially susceptible to being nipped by dogs and ingesting faecal material.

The local stray dogs howl at night. Not sure why they do this. Usually starts with one of the packs barking at another. The dogs in the village like to be part of this nocturnal woofing. Then an individual dog will start howling and they all join in like many little wolves. This is somewhat amusing but when they kick off at 2am, it is also annoying. I have discovered that if I shine my torch on them they stop. Almost like an off switch. I flash the light out of our bedroom window and suddenly there is complete eerie silence. If I look out the window, I can see many pairs of little doggy eyes catching the torchlight.

  • Portugese man o’war

5 thoughts on “Animals”

  1. Great photos as usual, but that scorpion definitely looks bigger than the one i going in Morocco!

  2. We just read your blog after seeing your truck at the campsite when we go on our walks. In fact we can just about see it from where we have been parked for the last 6 weeks. We are also in lockdown here and now we’ve seen your pictures we have seen you put on walks. We have been keeping a big distance from everyone and unlike you we have definitely talked to less people than usual! The dog situation here is terrible, far too many strays, we have never been anywhere in Morocco quite so overun with dogs, usually cats rule! Nice blog and great photos 😊 will give you a wave next time we see you out!

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