The family has just returned from a vacation in Marloth Park, bordering the Kruger National Park. This was our second visit in about five years. Yes, yes, I’m well aware of the contradiction after all the years I’ve been taunting readers of this column about the folly of bothering animals in their natural habitat. But I can explain. You see, I’m married and that’s where the missus wanted to go. This effectively means that I also needed to find my inner wildlife-gazing passion.

The house we rented is inside Marloth Park, with wild animals roaming free around us the entire time. As if I needed a reminder of the foolishness of it all, for three days in a row starting on New Year’s Eve we kept getting love notes via SMS from an entity that calls itself the Carnivore Team. All the texts had the same heading, bolded, in caps and in red: !! CARNIVORE ALERT !!, letting us know that three lions were roaming around freely, “highly mobile and hunting!". My favourite part was the warning for cyclists and joggers to “be cautious” and for everyone to not allow children outside. I kept thinking, “What about us?”..