When Sanet Steyn woke up in the early hours of Monday morning she was confused more than afraid when she saw an intruder in her flat. Steyn, who lives in a complex at the east end of African Street, said it was around 3.30am on Monday morning when she was woken by a light on in her flat. She thought she must have forgotten to switch it off and got up to do so – but was confused to see a person standing shining a light into her fish tank and staring into it, clearly absorbed and fascinated.

“What on earth are you doing?!” Steyn said. Startled, the intruder ran out of the door, jumped over the fence and disappeared down the street. It took a minute before the fact that she’d had an intruder set in, and Steyn ran to slam her door shut and looked for her phone to call Hi-Tec Security.

It was only then she realised that must have been the light the “rather short” intruder must have been using to watch the fish in the tank. Then with a shock she realised the intruder must have been right beside her while she was asleep. “It was next to me on my bedside table,” she said.

And the fish?

“Nothing special,” she said later. “Just some very plain guppies.”

Steyn said there had been several incidents in the complex in recent weeks.

“I’m just grateful that’s all that happened,” she said.

  • Main photo source: Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), male (above), and female (below) from “From species to communities: the signature of recreational use on a tropical
    river ecosystem” (Creative Commons)
Sue Maclennan

Local journalism

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