An amusing tale from his childhood told by Dudley Daniel, youngest son of Willie Daniel of Undercliff.
"One occasion when Mom and Dad were
out, one of dad’s employees came to the house to report that a wildcat (a civet) was attempting to get at the fowls in their run. My older brother Arthur took dad’s revolver,
a box of bullets and a torch and we headed for the run where we could hear the
chickens cackling and clucking in distress. There was a huge old willow tree
growing near the run and after shining the torch around in the tree we finally
picked up the reflective eyes of the wildcat. I was manning the torch and
Arthur did the shooting.
Trying to shoot a wildcat high up in a tree at night
with a revolver when you cannot see the gun sights is an almost impossible task
but Arthur just kept on shooting, maybe hoping for a lucky shot. We had almost
run out of ammunition when our older cousin Howard, who lived nearby, arrived
with an impi of his men and armed with a shotgun. He had heard the continuous
gunfire and feared that we might be under some form of attack. When we
explained the situation he killed the cat with one shot and, after quietly
informing us of his opinion of our dubious level of intelligence and comparing
us, unfavourably, to the baboons that had begun barking up in the mountain,
probably awoken by the gunshots, he left. I don’t think being called out on a
wild goose chase endeared us to him to a great extent."
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