Cat Like Animals

So I was traveling in some beautiful country in Massangena this past week. It is near the Zimbabwean border and on the other side of Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Southern Africa. It was virgin territory and quite beautiful. As we drove through the virgin forest savannah, a little animal darted across the road and bounded up the tree. It looked a lot like a squirrel. Jon, disagreed with me so we thought we would ask our Mozambican colleagues from the area. They said it was a locally known as a 'skiiroll'.

Ok, that was not very helpful because we needed to know some more information because it obviously was not a Portuguese word. We asked them to describe the animal a bit more. They said it was a cat like creature. Jon and I debated what it could be, a mongoose, cervet, bushbaby, lizard, we were not sure. I still thought it was a squirrel. We asked them some more questions to figure out what it is. They said that it lives in holes in the trees and eats nuts. Aha, I was sure it was a squirrel. Jon, however, was surprised to know that it existed in Moz or Southern Africa. I said that I had seen them before near Beira but they were times when I saw the animal up close and an English speaking African was able to confirm it. I had also seen them in the guide to Southern African mammals.

But skiroll, what kind of a name....wait...skiirowl...squirrol...squirrel...aha!!!

Turns out it was the same word but from Zimbabwean English. Yet adding Portuguese and African Indigineous pronunciation to the word and you get some unrecognizable form of the same word, for the same animal we know in North America.

We had a good laugh.