Wild life | 28 June 2018

Laikipia, Kenya

A minotaur head glowers at me through the bathroom window while I am brushing my teeth in the morning. It’s George the bull, who wants his ears scratched. After I get dressed, it’s time to select a cattle stick, known here as a finbo, from an umbrella stand stuffed with crooks, wands, withies, shillelagh-like cudgels and rods that a biblical prophet might have forgotten had he come to supper. I choose my favourite, a finbo that balances perfectly in the hand like a drum major’s malacca cane. Outside, a Jersey bullock is sprawled on the garden path, chewing the cud. I open the gate, passing under the skull of a long-horned beast, striding out among the paddocks where the weaners keen for their lost mothers, where the stirks and the mavericks are already grazing in the morning. At the crush the cowhands are preparing mobs of stores and culls to be weighed.