10:11, Monday, 27 June, 2011

On Saturday morning, we all slept in until the ripe old hour of 8:00. At last, it was sunny. Everything was wet so that the surrounding woods felt fresh and alive. The weather has been odd lately. I think of the weather at home as predictably unpredictable; here I find it to be unpredictably predictable. It tends to be very chilly in the mornings and at night, fairly hot during the day under the intense equator sun, and cool again at night, with rain showers usually only appearing at dusk. Although the days are variable, the season is constant. The Mara is at an elevation of 5,000 feet, so it is not terribly hot like most people would expect for somewhere in Africa. But lately it has been cool even at midday, and the clouds and haze have abounded, resulting in at least a little bit of rain and thunder during the day as well as at night. It has been so good to see the sun again the past couple of days! If the current pattern of rain continues, then the wildebeest migration will be pushed further and further back; I really hope to see it come while I am still in the west camp.

Shortly after breakfast, some friends of Kay’s came over to visit. They are from England, and come out to the Mara periodically to do some hobby photography. Their names are Sarah and Andy Skinner, and their friends Christian and Eddy. They had tea with us, and were delightful to talk with, especially concerning their brilliant accents. I noticed that British people, or at least these ones, tended to end all of their sentences with questions: couldn’t we? didn’t it? wasn’t it? didn’t you? isn’t it? It was charming, really. I would love to sound like that. However, it became very hard to stay awake regardless of how entertaining these new people were, and the accents became a uninterrupted swirl around my head until we were allowed to get up and move around again, at which time they left. Such interesting people I have been meeting out here!

As Meg was preparing to leave, Lia came and told me there was a big male baboon on the rock between Meg and our tents. I couldn’t contain my excitement! Baboons in camp at last! I walked gently over, but when I stopped to watch him, he became frightened and came down from the rock to go further back into the woods. He stopped a little further, and I walked calmly to sit on the rock where he had been sitting. He looked at me, seemingly unsure of what to make of this overly interested human. After a few short moments, he became wary again, and moved away. I continued to sit on the rock, expectant of more baboons, and indeed his troop was close behind him. I was so thrilled, but then I had to leave because everyone wanted a group picture before Meg and Zach left for Nairobi. But after bidding a sad farewell to Meg (we will surely miss her!), I immediately ran up past the choo, in the direction they were previously heading. I caught a glimpse of a male, and cautiously entered the little forest surrounding camp. It is so beautiful back there! I watched a foraging female through the trees, barely breathing; I think she saw me, but I’m not sure. A big male jumped up into a small tree, and it cracked and came crashing down. I was VERY tempted to keep following them when they started to move off, but I knew it wouldn’t be wise to do so alone since male baboons can get aggressive, especially towards white women. How I would have loved to though! I hope they return soon, even though I’m pretty sure Jorgio and Moses would feel the exact opposite had they known they were there.

During night obs, Lia put out a kong at South Den for a new novel object trial. The cubs were ADORABLE with it. At first they were all timid, touching it with their noses and jumping back, until Thylacine was finally brave enough to pick it up, tugging on it in an attempt to free it from the car. After it would swing back, Thylacine would lie down in front of it, and then do what is called a carpal crawl back up to it. Hyenas are digitigrade, which means that they technically walk on their fingers/toes. When they carpal crawl, they walk on what corresponds to the back of the human hand, folding back their paws so it looks kind of like they have only stumps to walk on. They are crouched down so that their back feet do kind of a duck-walk/scoot type thing as they move forward. It is a submissive behavior, and it was very interesting to see them do it towards a kong. I wonder if the behavior signifies more than just submission. But at any rate, eventually Jigs, another cub, stopped chewing on the kong and moved to the rope. Uh-oh. The rope was chewed through, and Jigs looked up at us out of the corner of his eye as he gingerly picked it up before tearing off with it. Kong loose on the savanna! We drove quickly after him, and had to get super close before he would drop it. Then I jumped out, barefoot in the middle of the vast expanse of gorgeous tall grass, the hyena cubs still disoriented and unaware that I was standing in the midst of them. After searching around for a moment, I grabbed the kong, resisted the sudden urge to go running and spinning further across the savanna, and hopped back into the car. What a thrill! When we drove back to the den, I felt kind of bad because two of the cubs kept sniffing around where the kong had been, and four other ones came and looked up at us expectantly, waiting for more toys to randomly fly out of our vehicle.

Returning to camp in the dark, we came upon two widely spaced orange eyes, facing directly at us in the dark. I was trying so hard to figure out what it could possibly be, thinking a buffalo, but that just didn’t quite fit. A hippo was blocking our path. Golly, do they ever look creepy in the dark! We waited at a safe distance as it took its sweet time moving off of the road. Oh hippos. The roadblocks out here are better than anywhere else in the world: giraffes, elephants, cape buffalo, hippos...

The following morning we could be found at North Den, black cubs squittering and nursing, older cubs romping around. I really like going to North Den in the morning, because the cubs are always so active then! Panda and Johny Rotten are usually the instigators that run around and get everyone up playing, except those whose mothers are currently present, grooming or nursing them. Lia deployed an old water bottle while we were watching them. She has been gathering good data to measure cognitive ability based on boldness and curiosity. It’s really neat that the cubs even come up towards the car and investigate, if you think about it. What curious, amazing little creatures! No one could figure out how to get his/her mouth around the water bottle. Angk and Gloc actually began to aggress at one another, not just play, over the water bottle. Finally, Angk figured out how to grab the rope that was wrapped around the tightly screwed cap, and pulled with all his might, only to have it snap back towards the car. Before long, the rope was chewed through again, and the trial had to be ended.

It was a quieter morning across the rest of the savanna; even the antelope seemed to be fewer than normal. We did see a troop of banded mongooses, and a huge group of giraffes with FOUR little ones. There were also several babies out: itty-bitty tommies with wind-farm tails; zebra foals with brown fuzz, sticking close to their mothers; stubby-horned topi learning to act silly while watching their older conspecifics; beautiful little impala mixed in with the harems. One lone male impala stuck out its neck, nose in the air, and made a great throaty grunt that seemed unfit to come out of such an agile being. Then, I offhandedly commented on how the guy in the back of the passing tourist vehicle looked like Adam Sandler. Without batting an eye, Dave said it very well could have been. Apparently a lot of celebrities come out here, and the balloon pilot that is a friend of the hyena camps has flown Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolee (sp), and various other emperors and big names. So I may or may not have seen Adam Sandler on safari yesterday.

During the day we rode to trade vehicles with two people from East Camp. I got to meet Dave’s girlfriend Julia (EXTREMELY nice person), and the research assistant Tracy (AWESOME person as well). Knowing there are great people over there will make switching to East Camp in a couple of weeks much easier. On the return trip, a vervet monkey hopped onto our stopped car while we were out talking with the gatesmen, one of whom uncannily resembled Barack Obama. Good thing we had rolled our windows up.

Last night Alice came with us on obs. It was great having her along. The cubs at Happy Zebra were amusing themselves by running through a big water hole near the den. Upon leaving the den we came upon Skittles, a hyena that everyone thought was dead because she hadn’t been seen in so long. She was eating an ostrich! I guess hyenas don’t kill ostriches, and my theory is that it got struck by lightning. Skittles is a very different-acting hyena, very paranoid and yet seemingly completely unaware of our presence. She kept coming up to the ostrich and then looking around repeatedly, not feeding as would be expected, although her belly did not look full. Just by how she was acting, I began to think she might have some sort of psychological disorder, and therefore was immediately intrigued. I was happy that we were going to follow her when she suddenly tore off a leg and went walking down the road with it- perhaps to an unknown natal den somewhere? But her mystery remains unsolved, because the wet black cotton mud in the culvert swallowed up our tires. It was a blast trying to get it unstuck: Alice, Lia and I pushing with all our might, barefoot it the squishy mud, while Dave manned the front of the vehicle, then searching around for rocks to put beneath the tires in the dark, and finally sitting atop the vehicle in defeat while waiting for rangers to come pull us out for the next half hour or so. We turned off our lights to keep the bugs away, and I cannot express how impressive the savanna is in the dark. So quiet and huge, nothing but a flat expanse of dark grass on either side of the road, a pair of jackal eyes here or there. We did turn the maglight on and check for wildlife every now and again, but things were pretty quiet where we were- quiet and perfect. Our friend Larigen (sp) came from the lodge to rescue us, along with Segurian and another guy that I don’t know. Segurian hopped out of the car, and after saying hello, he looked at the car, then at me, then at Dave, and said jokingly with a straight face, “Are you stuck?” Larigen had us out in no time. Such a wonderful person, Larigen! He kept saying how terribly sorry it was that we had to be stuck and wait out there, so content to be helping us, not the slightest hint of annoyance at being called out to come and get us.

It was hard to fall asleep last night, because a bunch of baboons started screaming, probably being hunted by the leopard I then heard. Zebras were also vocalizing, and then an eruption of giggles announced our hyenas were involved in whatever was going on. It all sounded unnervingly close.