Carol’s Column

So who needs a hog and a hyena in their lives?

IT WAS a beautiful T-shirt and short shorts day and I was sitting on the stoep eating a spanspek soaked in brandy and sugar — it's amazing what a spanspek will do to brandy — when I felt our built-in-1907-and-not-going-strong floorboards shaking.

And then he appeared on the stoep, my financial asset. Smiling and unusually jovial after a long, hot day at the office, he carried a large cardboard box under his left armpit.

"I have brought you a present," he said fondly, his spectacles twinkling in the begonia dappled sunlight.

Well, it wasn't a car. Not even a do-it-yourself Ferrari kit could fit into a box that size. And it wasn't a piece of jewellery. Any expectant wife could see that.

"I give up," I said coyly. Perhaps it was a midget dishwasher. For over 20 years I'd longed for a dishwasher, I'd dreamed of a dishwasher, I'd coveted everyone else's dishwasher. Perhaps, at last?

"This is a Mahoney," said my husband placing the box besides me.

From inside I heard scratching noises. And then suddenly, the lid burst open and a small, chocolate ball shot out.

"Good heavens, this is a hyena. Where did you find a hyena!" I shrieked. It is not every day that you get given a hyena instead of a dishwasher.

"Relax, I think it might be a dog," said my husband, "but whatever it is, I've christened him Mahoney Joe."

"How can you christen a Jewish hyena Mahoney, at least call him Moishe," I muttered as Mahoney, his small, ball-like body wriggling, sniffed and waggled his way on to my lap.

It transpired that one of my husband's colleagues discovered Mahoney in a dustbin in her block of flats. She rescued him, brought him to work and deposited him on my husband's desk. Which is why Mahoney Joe was now sitting on my lap.

We already have a dog that resembles a warthog — Henry the hog — it now seemed that The Hog was to be joined by a hyena.

Mahoney Joe flopped over like a plump pancake and lay, his balloon stomach protruding into the air.

"This is not a Mahoney Joe, this is a Milly Josephine," I observed. "We can't call a female hyena Mahoney Joe."

"Listen, Mahoney Joe's a great name for a hyena. Sex isn't important," said my husband. I could only agree, watching television is far more fun and it's less exerting.

"We must take Mahoney to the vet to see what she is," I said anxiously.

"Nonsense," said my spouse in that agreeable way of his. "You didn't take the kids to the vet to have them classified, what's this big thing about classification? You sound like Treurnicht."

The vet was categoric. "It looks like a hyena," he said as Mahoney smiled obligingly, "take her home and feed her three times a day."

And so Mahoney the hyena is here to stay and she has settled in well. Only my mother has misgivings.

"A hyena? Do you think that's wise?" she asked tentatively when I phoned her in Cape Town. "You already have so many misfits in the family. Henry the hog, a cat that purrs like a mole cricket, a deformed goldfish, your husband ... do you really need a hyena in your life?"

In one week, Mahoney Joe has chewed my lounge curtains, left pidlets and ploplets throughout the house, has eaten half a piano leg, has gnawed her way through three shoes and one pair of jeans, has dug up the winter seedlings, usurped me from my bed ("she doesn't snore as loudly as you," says my spouse) and prefers roast chicken to Epol ("can you blame her?" says Jamie.)

"She has a certain charm, don't you think?" I said to my good friend Betty as we watched her demolishing the cabbages.

"So had Emperor Bokassa, and he had a hearty appetite too," replied Betty.

It makes you think.

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