©  Frank Pope – a friendly but highly endangered Rothschild giraffe at home

The Rothschild giraffes came to visit yesterday, bowing their slender necks down to my hand in hope of a bran pellet.  At night I hear them feeding all around the bedroom, flicking tree branches back on to the roof with a great clatter. It keeps me awake but I like having them around, and I lie in bed watching the shadows of their long elegant forms glide across the wall.

Frank and I talk often of building a new house.  Between the termites tunneling a secret metropolis, and the ever expanding subterranean palaces of the warthogs, our little shack is now cocked sideways and subsiding slowly into the earth.  We call it the biodegradable house.  But it’s such a cosy love nest we seem incapable of moving on.  So long as there’s a roof over our heads!  And also, what would the warthogs do without it?