Ever heard a kookaburra call? Probably not. Well, you now can experience this raucous sound - and much more - at Predator World, a relatively new privately owned zoo in the Pilanesberg, about 5km from Sun City.
The kookaburra, for the uninitiated (I was one before surfing the internet) is a large kingfisher from Australia and New Guinea. Our guide at Predator World, Benzon, proudly stated that he had taught the bird - housed in what I thought an alarmingly small cage at the entrance to the zoo - to talk and immediately made prompting noises right at the bird's ear.
Back came a loud, echoing, cackling sound - almost like the laughing policeman on that old 78 my father used to play.
"Can you get him to repeat that?" asked a middle-aged woman, ready to record the speech on her camcorder. The bird obliged with an even more vociferous onslaught. "What do you think he's saying?" she asked Benzon, who just smiled.
I felt like speaking for the bird: "Get me a bigger cage, Bruce - and a Sheila - or I will arrange for Warnie to come out of retirement this summer!"
Perhaps it could. The kookaburra, you see, is something of an icon in Australia where, for example, some of the world's top cricket equipment has been named after it. And the Aborigines believe that when the sun rose for the first time, God ordered the kookaburra to laugh loudly so that mankind would wake up and see the lovely sunrise. "How did the bird get here?" I asked Benzon. "A local lady kept it as a pet," was the tragic reply.
With all the space available at Predator World, I am hoping that the 'burra would soon have a more spacious home.
Getting him that feathered Sheila might not be as simple.
Benzon then took us past an enclosure with a few marmoset monkeys and quickly warned that the small apes could pee on us. The pause button was hastily pressed on the camcorder as its operator moved back in alarm.
It was weird hearing the howling of hyenas in daylight. Approaching their cages, we saw how the females - leaders of the pack in hyena hierarchy - had attacked an unfortunate male. With a badly wounded back, he had to be separated and now has what in other societies is the gentle sex as neighbours.
"I'm glad I'm not a hyena," Benzon observed. "Females crack the whip in their world."
The sentinel was on his lofty duty in the meerkat pit, guarding the lives of his small family eating below. "He keeps a lookout for eagles, even here," Benzon told us. It is difficult not to take a decent picture of meerkats (they just about pose for the camera), so as this was one of few enclosures without wire fencing, I clicked away as my group made their way to the snake room with its offbeat front facade.
I don't like watching snakes in glass cages. Most of the time they just sleep and the whole exercise seems pointless. But Benzon was about to change that. As we stopped at the python cage, he asked: "Now, who would like a picture taken holding this snake?"
He rattled off the different pricing, depending on whether your own camera or that of Predator World is used. My loud refusal probably spoilt the woman's video recording. Stripper Glenda Kemp may have danced with her "Oupa", but I'll keep my distance, thank you.
In a dark room, Benzon showed us a variety of snakes from many corners of the world, including our own rinkhals, which, he said with grim determination, would never undergo a name change. "Look at its neck: that is a ring around its hals. It's our South African name, and it will stay "rinkhals", he vowed, as if afraid of ANC moves to rename it.
Then there was a small container with cockroaches, which Benzon said were from Madagascar. I've read that some people keep hissing cockroaches from Madagascar as pets, but these were very awfully quiet. Perhaps they only hiss behind your back?
After passing an awesome iguana lazing on a branch, Benzon leapt over the wall of a pit to produce a new Oz oddity. "This is the Australian blue-tongued lizard. Would anyone like to stroke it?" he asked, cradling the reptile in his arms.
It seemed an offer ready for refusal, but the avid videographer hastily passed the camera to her husband to record her stroking the skink - who obliged by sticking out a fat blue tongue. These slow-moving lizards are apparently common in Australian gardens, tolerate being picked up, and then can end up - heaven forbid - as pets.
But enough about the dark room, and the cheetahs, leopards and porcupines we passed on the way. Throughout the tour, Benzon had nervously kept an eye on his watch to make sure that his schedule would not miss the main reason why the crowds flock to Predator World: to see the lions feeding.
The zoo has about 30 lions, Benzon told us, of which several are white. And, sure enough, our first sight of the King of Beasts was a magnificent long-maned white male, all alone in his large enclosure. The male, like most of the lions in the other enclosures, was impatiently pacing up and down along the wire fences. They could smell that Mr Delivery would soon be knocking on the gate.
"The lions get fed every second day," Benzon explained, clearly relieved that he had brought our group to the spectacle in time. "Today, Rainbow chickens are on the menu", he said, pointing to a man pushing a wheelbarrow filled with a mountainous pile of dead chickens.
After herding the lions into a cage-within-a-cage (so that the main course remained chicken, not Homo sapiens), the feeder entered the cage and meticulously hurled the chickens close to the fence where the spectators, and their cameras, were waiting.
When the lions - impatiently trampling all over each other - were finally released from their small holding pen, the rush was like opening morning at an Oxford Street Boxing Day sale: growls, roars, threatening noises and a manic scramble. Then the sound of flesh and intestines being ripped, bones cracked, and the gulping of huge mouthfuls of bloody, feathered meat.
As the stock diminished, the big cats started squabbling over what was left. I have often watched - detached from real horror - lions devouring impalas or zebras in the wild, but this close-up and ferocious onslaught on dead birds unexpectedly upset me. Perhaps I've become too used to drumsticks wrapped in Woolies plastic. I felt like a faint-hearted Roman watching lions eating Christians in the Colosseum.
Anyway, the wide-eyed, gasping tourists loved every minute of the wild culinary orgy. But I hadn't had lunch prior to my visit to Predator World, and this wasn't the kind of spectacle for an empty stomach.
I thanked Benzon and took my leave. "You're not staying for the wild-dog feeding?" he asked incredulously. "Maybe next time," I said, slipping him a tenner.
I've had experience of wild dogs' table manners - and that's definitely more than a faint-hearted Benonian could take on an empty tummy.
- Predator World is 5km from Sun City on the R556, towards Pretoria. For more info, call 014-552-6900, email [email protected] or visit the website