Strange yet true

When Carmen was 3 and Raewyn 1 and a half, I worked on a game farm overseeing ostriches.  I only worked there for about 4 months before I was fired.   Carmen used to insist that an ostrich kicked her even though she had never been near the ostriches.

As if the fact that I worked as an Ostrich overseer is not strange enough the tale has another twist.

When I started working there I felt very sorry for the boss and his children.  His wife and their mother had been murdered.  A month after I started working there his girlfriend came to stay with them.  She was a lovely girl and very kind to me. 

Three years later I went with my ex husband to visit his uncle on a farm near to the farm where I had worked.

I saw that he had an ostrich and I told him about where I had worked.  He was so astonished he told me that my former boss was in jail and that he had his wife killed for the insurance money.  I was flabbergasted.  I worked for a psychopathic killer.  I was still not sure if the story was true.  (There was no internet back then.)  My mom gave me some old magazines.  In the one magazine there was an article, “Husbands who killed their wives.”  There was a photo of my former boss.

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I often think of his children.  His oldest son frequently accompanied  me when I was tending to the ostriches.  How does it feel to know your Dad murdered your Mom?

 I think of my former boss’ parents and how I thought at the time that they were horribly cold people.  He was better at masking his coldness.  I did not like him very much but I did not think for a minute that he was a murderer.  He built his parents a house on the farm an exact replica of his house in town.  I was amused that the house looked horrible on a farm it was a city house not a farm house.  I wonder if they knew that their home was built with blood money?