11:51, Sunday, 31 July, 2011

We also saw three more cheetahs that morning, a cohort of males if I’m not mistaken. Then last night we saw all of Talek territory’s lions except for one male, meaning I saw twenty-five cats in one day, the most yet. Unlike upwards of 60% of the people in my field, I don’t believe much in coincidence, and I like to think that yesterday was somehow Minnie’s way of saying goodbye from wherever she is now. I will surely miss her.

There is a second strain of wildebeest passing through, so we get to feel the full effects of the migration at last. They are everywhere. It’s so remarkable. The only place where they weren’t was on the plain with the lions, and who can blame them? I have noticed that there is usually at least one per large group who just seems overjoyed to be a wildebeest, bucking and sprinting all over the place. What odd animals they are, though, with their long beards and tapering rectangle faces with peculiarly placed eyes and curly horns, hairy tails with one little flap of skin at top, Choobacka (sp) grunts and a size much smaller than I originally imagined. Two males were sparring last night, and even that ritual is abnormal. They stand face-to-face, plant those faces in the dirt and then circle one another. I assume horn butting comes later, but we couldn’t stick around to see.

We turned more tourist heads with our Maasai dress, and one lady actually went so far as to snap a picture of us. At dinner Triple B worked up the courage to come grab a noodle dangling from my hand. And, THE SAFARI ANTS ARE GONE FROM THE CHOO! What a relief. There is the most amazing line of them crossing the path, however. The warrior ants have formed a tunnel over the line of walking ants, likely transporting their babies from one place to another. The ants in the dome stand stock-still, holding onto one another like the separate bars of the monkey-domes in playgrounds. Right on our path is the only place where they are structured like so, even though their line extends probably one hundred meters through and beyond camp, thus my hypothesis that the behavior serves a protective function. If you place the tip of a stick in the ants’ path, they are crawling over the entire thing within seconds (it’s good to make sure you have a long stick), and the line will slightly follow your foot as you step over before reforming. The warriors are enormous, and I guess one drew blood when it bit Eli today; you don’t mess with these guys. Incredible little creatures.

We made it out to Prozac today. No hyenas, but we found two really good mothers. One was a lion, who was pouncing on and wrestling with her little male cub, the smallest cub I have seen on this trip. It was just the two of them, and it was excellent to see her play with him like that. The other mother was a plover/lapwing, whose nest was right by the road. She stood over her extraordinarily camouflaged eggs, refusing to move when we slowed down to view her nest even though her countenance screamed terrified. Impressive indeed.

After obs, we gave a tour of camp and a talk on hyenas to a group of students from George Mason who are staying at JK Safari Camp; it was actually a splendid experience, and definitely different being on this side of it. They all seemed very interested in hyenas; I wish Kay could have met them. And Isaac was there! He was one of our drivers on BEAM. He remembered me, and is as full of life as ever, the loudest Kenyan I have ever known (most are very soft-spoken, at least from an American perspective, as we tend to be quite loud).

And now you can expect to see a duck flying backwards, because twice in a row I have written blog posts of almost reasonable length...sort of.