11:42, Tuesday, 19 July, 2011

The whole camp shut down when we returned from Talek, meaning we all took a three hour nap without knowing that everyone else was doing the same. Then on night obs we found our first lion of the East! I am going to name the lions on this side after authors, but I haven’t picked one for this lioness yet. I was thinking Montgomery, but that sounds more boyish, even though L.M. Montgomery was a woman.

I met Pene and Ziti tonight, the subadults who make up what Brian calls the “best bromance ever.” One is rarely seen without the other. We all hope that they emigrate to the same clan.

At dinner Bilal, the Indian professor from the University of Michigan who has been staying here studying the effects of cell phone usage on cow herding, called me out for feeding Kelsey my meat. We rarely get meat out here, and this was “premo grassfed beef.” That didn’t stop me; I’m sure he knew it wouldn’t. There is no resisting that face, especially when she comes up and stands on her hind legs with her front paws resting on your chair. And meat is her favorite thing.

Yesterday morning I was reminded how truly different black rhinos are, with their little eyes that seem to be too far forward on their faces, and a big horn randomly sticking up out of nowhere. How marvelous, though! It’s incredibly rare to see a black rhino anywhere, as I think I’ve made quite clear, but especially on this side of the park. And it was walking so out in the open! It peed the “fine mist” that Julia described on our BEAM trip; it sprayed out from its back end in a sprinkler-like shape. There is some sort of thing going on between the Narock (sp) County Council and Brian Heathe, the former being the head of this side of the reserve, and Brian being the head of the conservancy. Apparently Brian is trying to take over the whole park or some such thing, and every time he does, the council has a black rhino killed. People are unbelievably stupid sometimes; stuff like that makes my blood boil. Dave has made rhinos a CI, or critical incident, so that they hyena researchers record the location every time we see one.

I went for a magnificent run when we returned to camp, fifteen minutes out and fifteen back in, huffing like Puff the Magic Dragon in the inescapable heat. Some silly impala were under the impression that I could catch up with them, and leaped away from the side of the road as I plodded along. A couple of kids yelled “Jambo jambo jambo!” from their post tending the sheep and goats, and this pushed me along with more gusto even though it took everything in me to wheeze a jambo in return.

Baboons ran screaming through camp early afternoon. Geesh, they were making a ruckus! Someone was definitely picking on somebody else. We now have to dodge a few big blobs of baboon dung along our paths, but it’s so worth it. There were at least four juveniles in the troop, hanging on precariously to their mothers’ backs, and one female had an infant under her belly that managed to pull itself up onto her back. A big male didn’t notice me while I was sitting at our desk writing, and I was ecstatic to watch him walk along nearby undisturbed. Later on, still sitting at the desk, I spotted something tawny and moving back in the bush. I was sure it was a lion, and then it mooed. Cattle. Kay would have had her squirt gun on them by now.

I spotted some slender mongooses back in the brush on the way to the choo. They sound identical to dwarf mongooses, but are larger, leaner, and have a very long tail with a black tip. So cute!

Driving out to night obs, we passed a couple of kids, probably eleven to thirteen years old. One of them made a weird face and did sort of an exercise lunge forward as we drove by. We all busted into laughter; Joe and I were totally that kid along DeWitt Road when we were younger. When we regained our composure, Lia turned to me and said, “Kids: universally silly.” So true, so wonderfully true.

And then... we came upon six subadult cheetahs, the cubs of Super Mom, the cheetah famous out here for successfully raising six cubs (whereas most cheetahs are lucky if they manage one). I LOVE CHEETAHS! And six of them! We were hoping one would jump up on our car like it did to Brian last week, but I was out of my mind just watching them lie there and roll over and yawn and be the sweetest and least intimidating big cats in the world. Lia and I have a lot of naming to do; I think we were better off before googling stones and minerals, because now we just have too many excellent choices.

Two thirty this morning, and I wake up to some very noisy chewing. God would have it that I forgot to close my window flap last night, making everything more audible. Hippo? I thought. No, it was eating from the trees, and coming closer. Before I knew it, the silhouette of a giraffe came into view. They were all around us, pulling and snapping leaves off the trees. I shook Lia awake, and we sat on my bed looking out at the one that had moved to within five meters of the tent. Amazing, amazing, amazing. And the best thing about giraffes is that there’s nothing to fear; they are extremely peaceful creatures. We opened all of the windows and lost a lot of sleep to our excitement. A younger one was visible from Lia’s bed. After about half an hour they moved out of sight, and the sound of their eating lulled me smiling back to sleep.

This morning, we discovered that the giraffes had been all throughout camp, and had woken everyone. Brian said he didn’t know what it was at first, but he thought, “Ohp, giraffe” as soon as he looked out and saw only a leg up to the knee. :) Eli was amusingly frustrated because he couldn’t sleep due to their noisy munching.