text: After eating many dry pellets this zebra had the right idea, to lick the rain off the newest little blue car. (See the story below)
  The plan for today’s post had been to tell our peculiar “car story” and a little about last night’s special evening when Louise and Danie came for dinner. After a very much-needed rainy night and morning, we had an extra morsel to share that we’ve added to our story…nine zebras stopping by this morning for “breakfast.”
  Yesterday, when I was cutting up a variety of vegetables in order to roast them as a side dish for last night’s dinner, I saved all the scraps hoping to share them with any animal visitors who may stop by.
  Lo and behold the nine zebras ate every last morsel this morning, including the carrots shown in Tom’s hands which I hurriedly cut up while he tossed out the pellets.
  Well, then…here’s the little car story. Today is Thursday. On Monday afternoon I noticed I had a Skype message from a South Africa phone number which was odd. We have a local SIM card in my phone and could receive phone calls but for some odd reason, we can’t ever hear it ring. Our local friends reach us using “Messenger.”
  This was the second little car which they brought from Nelspruit which is about a 90-minute drive to swap with the first little car.
  As a result, we don’t give out the SIM card’s phone number when we’re asked for a local phone number. We don’t keep our cell phones handy during the day until bedtime when we both use them for late night reading. Thus, the number we provided for the car rental facility in Nelspruit was our Nevada based Skype number with a 702 area code.
  Yesterday morning, they brought this little blue car which we’ll keep until the end of our three-month contract when we’ll start all over again. This car is the best of the three. It has power windows and driver controlled door locks, making it more user-friendly.
  When I listened to the message, I was frustrated. They said they’d “sold” the little car and we were supposed to bring it back to Nelspruit where they’d give us a different car. There was no way we were interested in driving for three hours (round trip) to accommodate their request.
  When this zebra entered the yard at 9:00 am we suspected others will follow and our suspicions were correct…eight followed.
  We have a contract that reads the car is ours until May 8. This same scenario had happened in 2013 when we were living in Boveglio, Tuscany, Italy. We received a similar call from the car rental facility in Venice expecting us to drive five hours each way.
  All nine of them clamored by the veranda as we tossed pellets and vegetable scraps we’d been saving for this very purpose.
  When we explained how far away we were and there was no way we were willing to drive that far so they could sell the car, they said they’d get back to us. That call never came. We returned the car when the contract ended. See our story about that scenario here.