Two weeks ago, just after my return to Niger, Anette and I took our two mares Arwen and Sahara to see the third member of their flock: Sahara’s younger sister Maya who now stays with another expat family only a block away.

Maya was happy to see us again and made sure as usual to plant herself in the midst of the attention. Nothing wrong with her self-confidence!

Sahara and Arwen found the whole place intriguing. And hey, have I ever told you that I find Nigerien barbs so utterly beautiful???

Although the trio doesn’t meet daily anymore, they immediately started interacted as a flock - and group activity was a fact.

While the horses were interacting on their own, Anette and I took some time to get to know Koro’s pet monkey Jojo a little bit better.

Jojo’s hunger for world dominion was the same as with my twenty-two year old baboon male, but thankfully, Jojo is considerably smaller than Rez in size and eventually he settled for the kingdom of my arm.

Then some action took place, when a turtle came out of its hole. I don’t know who of the three sounded the alarm, but the horses were on high alert!

It is in moments of fear that you can tell which horse has leadership abilities… Maya viewed the turtle she actually knows in her everyday life (but which she no longer knew seeing she was now part of a flock that had labeled the turtle as a dangerous object…) from the safety of Sahara’s back, while Arwen the gentle one backed away as far as she could…

The turtle cared nothing for the horses however and went about its business as usual, but the horses were so intrigued that they kept they kept following it, despite their obvious uneasiness…