Thursday, 23 June, 2011

When we left camp for night obs in South Territory after I last wrote, we came upon a couple of stunningly dark male giraffes. One of them had so many spots that it looked like a puzzle whose pieces are in place, but not yet attached. Very cool. And the way they stood on the top of the mountain escarpment was very classic.

Driving along, I noticed that the zebras were very peppy. They ran around like Willie and Scandy when they are feeling like young horses again. Two of them intently groomed one another’s shoulders, others chased each other in what appeared to be wily bliss. Dave expressed an urge to slap a zebra on the butt as we drove past.

At the South den, there were several males present. The coolest thing was when two of them did what is called a social sniff, followed by a parallel walk. These are two behaviors that reinforce social bonds. A social sniff consists of two individuals sniffing the ground at the same spot, nose-to-nose, while being bristle-tailed, and turning slightly in a circle like wheel spokes. This is followed by a bouncy sort of walk-trot, in which the hyenas move in unison while slightly staggered, one a little in front of the other. It was extremely interesting to witness.

The impala were chasing one another ridiculously across the plains again, their white tails all fanned out. A tommy all out sprinted to prevent a female from leaving the boundaries of his harem. Three ostriches walking in the dusk curiously appeared much bigger as silhouettes than they do otherwise, like some ancient raptor-bird in the night. On the drive back towards camp, Dave asked us what we hadn’t seen on our trip yet that we wanted to. I mentioned that I would like to see a leopard. About a kilometer further up the road (kilometer...the scientist in me is coming through), no joke, we came upon a leopard slinking across the road. It looked very young, and we are pretty sure it’s the one we have been hearing in camp at night. I quickly told Dave that I would also like to see a snake, but no dice this time. However, this sparked a very entertaining conversation concerning snakes. A while back, Dave had a black mamba try to get into his tent while attempting to escape mongooses. Mambas, being very aggressive, are not something to be dealt lightly with. I guess that he called Jorgio over, and the Maasai are very good at “disposing” of snakes without getting bitten. I think they beat them, which is extraordinarily sad to imagine as I’m sure that snake was just as terrified as Dave, but he said it was either he or the snake, so I cannot fault anyone. But ANYWAY, we started talking about what we would want to happen if we were to get bit by a mamba. Don’t worry Mom, we have fly-in health insurance, and the anti-venom helicopter only takes 20 minutes to get here from Nairobi, whereas the neurotoxic venom will not kill you for 30-45 minutes. But theoretically, we decided we would want to have our favorite camp foods made right away just in case. Dave said he would want chapati, Lia crepes, me scrambled eggs with miboga, and Zac just wants Siracha sauce :). So now we have a plan of action, perhaps a good thing since Dave’s girlfriend Julia saw a black mamba slither away in East Camp by the choo yesterday morning!

When we got back to camp, I headed up the path towards the bathroom, but something’s green eyes were glowing in the light of my headlamp right around the edge of the tarp. I stood there for like ten minutes trying to figure out what it was; it moved around every so often, looking at me, but eventually disappeared, so I continued. Then, on the way back down, I saw it again off to the side in the woods. It was a civet!!! I watched it for a long time, and it just sat there on a low branch watching me, its ringed tail announcing it was in fact a civet and not a genet. I called Lia over, and somehow it wasn’t afraid when she tried to get a picture in the dark. Eventually it slinked off, and we returned to the dinner table.

It was Mexican night African style; Moses (who came to take Filiman’s spot when he left on break; he is also extraordinarily nice) made his rendition of burritos, not quite understanding the concept of salsa, but it was still very delicious. Somehow Meg and Dave got into an argument about whether Siracha or Kenyan Kachumbari sauce was spicier, and so she, he, and Zac put a dab of each of them and tabasco sauce on their plates and tested them against one another. The conclusion was that Siracha only seemed spicier because it lingered longer. Zac thought tabasco sauce was spiciest, but the other two shot him down. Well, I’m glad that’s settled.

Yesterday morning I went to Happy Zebra with Zac; a giraffe was right at the bottom of the camp driveway as we exited. The hyenas at the Alamo Den remained out of sight for a long time, with only a lark singing happily atop a dead branch sticking up from the center of the den mounds, as the red sun rose in the again cloudy sky. Eventually the female Sawtooth arrived, and her two cubs emerged to nurse. However, Sawtooth was very uncomfortable, and kept looking off to the northeast, eventually walking away and leaving the cubs to crawl back into the safety of the den. The surrounding topi, impala, hartebeest, and tommies were also on edge, the topi snorting, and everyone staring in one direction. We decided to go investigate. It was a juvenile/subadult lion, probably around the age of two, failing miserably at hunting. If your prey is aware of your presence when you’re a cat, it’s trouble. Cats are fast, but only for very short bursts of time, and rely quite heavily on the element of surprise. I got some good pictures of her, and she lead us back to four more lions! Woohoo! There were two large females, an adolescent male that barely had a mane started, and another adolescent female. They licked one another affectionately, the returning female juvenile nuzzling up to her assumed mother. The adults just stared at us (I absolutely cannot get over lion eyes), used to the constant paparazzi surrounding their famed lion lives, but the juveniles were much more fun to have around. The young male walked right over to within about ten meters of us, staring back at me as I snapped pictures for my project. The other female seemed curious as well, but wasn’t quite as bold. Eventually, the original female went off to hunt again, disappearing beneath the grass. After a long time, the others got up and went to join her, their shoulders a perfect motion above the grass. They didn’t end up making a kill though, much less trying very hard, barring the ambitious young female. Instead, they sniffed a tree, a couple of them getting up on their hind legs so that I thought they were going to attempt a climb, before settling down beneath a nearby bush. Naptime had arrived: twenty-one hour naptime. We left after about a full hour of photographing and watching them. I am very excited to have a look at those pictures this afternoon.

Along the road, I watched a baby tommy run and stot repeatedly in the absence of a predator. An antelope stots by spryly jumping into the air, advertising its fitness to surrounding predators, saying, “Don’t try to catch me, because it will be much too difficult.” This baby seemed to be practicing for the mere joy of it. A secretary bird also crossed the road in front of us, its disproportionately long legs an odd sight to behold.

Back at camp, I experienced hand-washing my clothes in the little basin outside of our tent. It felt delightfully like a Laura Ingalls-Wilder book. Then I worked on my lions. I am now positive that the first five males I saw were all different. I named the final one Seger; I now have Mumford, Jack Johnson, Coltrane, Seger, and Bieber. However, would you believe that the female seen with Mumford was the same one seen with Seger a day later? Yep, Weepie is not messing around. She is the one with the missing eye; after her ear damage and whisker patterns proved identical, I noticed that in the first string of pictures she kept her right eye firmly closed, explaining why I had not realized it as missing. Thus my named females are Shakira and Weepie, and today I am going to add a whole ‘nother slew of them.

Our mongooses have not been here for the past two days, and I am starting to miss them very much. However, I did witness two of our bats (who are always around) hanging right next to each other in the lab tent, face to face as though hugging, one grooming the other while simultaneously keeping an eye on me, its enormous ears flicking outwards. And while preparing to leave at five yesterday evening, I spotted three lovely little dik-diks right next to my tent out the window, timidly eating leaves from the bushes.

We found yet two more lionesses on night obs, very near the bottom of our camp area. One was absolutely huge! Among the night’s inevitable adventures, we drove past a hole in the ground, and all of a sudden Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! A mother warthog and her three overgrown piglets shot up out of it one after the other. It was very comical. Our crazy secretary bird was hopping aimlessly about the plain and up into trees again. I daresay he should have a name if we see him again. There was a male ostrich so ready to mate that its skin was flushed a bright pinkish red, as though it either had very high blood pressure or was tremendously embarrassed. Lia began her project last night as well, setting out the bottom of a jerry can to test boldness variation in the cubs at north. They were so funny to watch, and the best part was when Sauer (the adult female) decided she wanted in on the game, and came over to investigate. She sniffed at the can, then suddenly picked it up and tried to run away with it, until she got to the end of the rope and it flung out of her mouth and back towards the car, scattering all of the cubs. It was rather hilarious.

After dinner, which included the delicious green spinach-like sukuma, I walked back to our tent. About five minutes after I had finished washing my face, a lion roared not 40 meters away, followed by a chorus of hyena giggles and a hippo grunt. I flung everything around in an attempt to find my glasses, and then sat pasted against the window with my flashlight against the net so I could see out. They were outlandishly close, and Jorgio and Moses had to walk Lia back to our tent to make sure nothing happened, telling us that the animals were right down by the shower. Lia and I couldn’t control our excitement; no way were we going out of that tent, but we remained by the window, determined to catch some of the action with our eyes. It took awhile for us to realize that maybe the animals were skirting the light, so we turned off our lights and waited before shining out again. Finally, we got a glimpse of two green eyes, either belonging to a lion or hyena, about 20-30 meters from the tent. Wow! Eventually the action settled down, the hyenas ceased giggling in fear and whooping for reinforcements, the intermittent, heart-trembling roar of the lion could no longer be heard. The silly hippo kept vocalizing though- they always do.

This morning, Zac told us he had discovered the source of the commotion. Having driven over to the lodge to transcribe notes last night, he came upon a leopard with an impala kill right at the base of camp. Lions are notorious for stealing food, and they also tend to terrorize any hyenas that are in their way. Lord knows the hippo probably got mixed up in everything, and the poor leopard certainly went home hungry. Life is not unfair only in the human world.