I had to go to George for business, so for the first time I was going to leave Hendrix alone, nice and safely behind my new fence that Peter had assured me no animal would try and crawl through. The poor boy looked extremely miserable when he realized that he was not going with, and that with him full well knowing that he would be so uncomfortable, with his car sickness. My heart was sore on looking back and seeing the poor dog standing at the gate, not looking at all like a fierce guard dog as Irma would like me to believe, but rather like a little boy whose sucker was taken from him by the school bully!
I raced through all I had to do, and declining Irma's invite to have a late lunch with her, I set out for home. The closer I came to Knoll's halt, the stronger a smell of smoke that my nose had picked up became, and steadily became worse, until I was sneezing and coughing, as huge clouds of smoke was billowing from behind the mountains that I still had to get through. Coming around a bend in the pass, I was confronted with huge orange flames licking with giant tongues at the trees until the trees caught fire, and exploded into balls of fire! The fire was very close to the road, and the smoke made visibility bad, but I just gritted my teeth and drove through, hoping that one of the exploding trees would not fall on me.
I am not the type that prays for everything I need, but thinking of the poor small animals, specially the huge old tortoises and their offspring, snakes and smaller rodents that would not be able to get out of the way of this inferno, I prayed! I have seen what a fire like this could do to animals, sometimes leaving them half alive, maimed and in great pain, left to die a painful death, and it simply broke my heart.
Coming around another bend I had a good view of the extent of the fire, and it was bad, covering a huge area of the Langkloof, and my heart felt like a piece of stone in my chest, and I begged God to please send a loaded cloud to put out this terrible fire, but no big cloud formed to lift the heavyness in my heart.
At home Hendrix was waiting for me at the main gate, having climbed through the fence, just as I predicted, but I felt no sympathy when I saw the big chunk of his hair hanging from the barbed wire! Meanwhile the fire had been blown by a strong winds towards Haarlem, and the trees on the hill above us looked like a display of fireworks as the they lit up, and then explode, sending out clouds of bright red sparks! I was scared out of my wits, as I have a thatch roof, and if one of the sparks blew down and onto the roof, my house could burn down. It was dark, but I knew I had to water my roof down, so I struggled with the heavy irrigation pipes until I had it in a position to be able to spray my roof, and poor old Hendrix with his animal instincts must have sensed the danger, and I had to speak to him a few times to get out from under my feet.
Having done all I could to try and make my house save, I fixed dinner, and fed Hendrix, and then sat at the window to see what the fire was doing. Police were driving around to tell us that we might have to leave our places and go to safety, and I was indeed apprehensive!
I was so busy watching the fire, and worrying myself into a decline about both my roof and the animals, that I never saw the clouds building up, and when I heard the drops on  the zink of my scullery roof, I did not believe that it was indeed raining. The huge drops that alerted me became heavier and heavier, until it was like buckets of water were tipped out from heaven! I grabbed Hendrix's front paws and danced around joyfully! As I was not feeling like running up and down in the rain, I fetched my and Hendrix's bedding from the anexe, and made our beds in the main house.
After taking an alergex for my sneezing caused by the smoke, I did fall asleep, the tablet making me quite drowsy, but was rudely awakened, to find water pouring from about five different places in the roof! My feet were wet, and also the front part of the bed, and it was now raining so hard, that I just covered the bed with plastic bags, then a dry blanket, and with a plastic bucket on each side of me, an a piece of plastic over my feet, I tried in vain to sleep again,