ANIMAL HISTORIES

The city of Cape Town and suburbs are built on a long narrow Peninsula with animals having played a part in local history. Baboons, Cape otters, cerval cats, porcupines, tortoises, are to be found on the mountainous areas while various other larger animals are to be seen in more enclosed spaces such as the Cape Point Nature Reserve or on the Groote Schuur Estate. Bird species are popular members of suburban gardens. But certain individual animals have become legendary, details of their lives still being spoken about long after their demise. 

HOUT BAY LEOPARD

Just below Chapman’s Peak Drive at the Hout Bay end,  placed on a rock looking out to sea,  is a bronze statue of a leopard.   It was sculpted by Ivan Mitford Barberton in 1963.  In 1933 and 1936 leopards were still sighted near Hout Bay and the last one was said to having been seen in 1938.  The statue can be perceived as a memorial to those leopards who once roamed the nearby mountains.  It is certainly a phtographic image that many local and overseas visitors take home with them.

JUST NUISANCE SIMON'S TOWN

Simon’s Town, a naval town, had an animal that was often in the news, in this case a domestic animal.  He was a Great Dane dog named Just Nuisance who became a well known   “naval personality.”   Able Seaman Just Nuisance was enlisted in the Royal Navy during the second World War, 1939-1945. His role, according to reported events, seems to have been that of a self imposed protector of Royal Navy ratings.  He died on 1 April 1944 aged seven years and is buried on Red Hill, Simon’s Town with a headstone giving essential life details. This well known canine continues to be remembered by the town's residents as a former important “personage”. In recent years a statue of the Great Dane was positioned on the Town’s Jubilee Square.

Simon’s Town also had, in earlier years, an unusual ship’s mascot as a visitor.  She was Rifles the leopard.  The story goes that while the coal burning ship”Narcissus”  based in Simon’s Town and part of the Royal Navy  South Atlantic Squadron visited Mombasa, Kenya in 1914, an officer bought a young leopard kitten. The captain agreed to allow the small cat aboard. In time she wore a collar with her name on it, became very tame and very used to her fellow shipmates. In 1919 the ship was decommissioned and Rifles became a resident of the London Zoo.

Philly the white horse was another animal that was often in the public eye, particularly in Camps Bay. As a young foal he was, in 1932, bought or rescued by a Mr De Beer from a farm in Hout Bay.  At this time Camps Bay was not heavily populated nor were there many cars on the roads so Philly was able to roam about the area more or less as he wanted.  The Law seemed to have turned a blind eye to his comings and goings. Gardeners prized his droppings.  This did not mean that there were no complaints such as he was a “nuisance, an itinerant beggar, a vagrant and a won’t work.” By 1962 Philly, with suitable ceremony,  was made a Freeman of Camps Bay.  By this time he had a donkey companion named Nellie.  But times were changing. Camps Bay had grown so it was decided that the two would be confined at night.  But Philly was aging and died on 9 December 1967.  A memorial plaque was placed on a wall of the Camps Bay library.  There is also a mural in the Camps Bay High School which depicts details of Philly the white horse and Nellie his donkey companion.

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