8:50, Wednesday, 27 July, 2011

Oh my, so much to write about!!!

Let’s see...Saturday evening we found our first Prozac lion. He is an old and decrepit-looking male; at first we thought he might be dead because he wasn’t moving a millimeter, but then we saw that his belly was rising with breath, thank goodness. It would have been a little too weird to come upon a dead king of the jungle. Unfortunately, I am WAY behind on naming lions, so I haven’t even considered what to name him. It turns out that it can be extraordinarily frustrating trying to ID lions; I am still working on pictures from Serena. It’s all in whether you have a good photograph. With good photographs it’s fun, like a mystery you have to solve, matching whiskers and ears, and you feel accomplished once you figure it out after a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, I have looked at a blurry picture for three hours, going back and forth whether I think it depicts a new lion or matches up with one I already have, only to end up with an asterisk beside whatever I decide with a corresponding footnote that I’m not sure. And just yesterday, I discovered that Jack Johnson and Seger are the same lion!!! That’s what comes of studying animals that can’t be bothered even to raise their heads. Jack Johnson and Seger were two of my favorite lion names, and it would be hard to choose between them, so I just rolled them both into an Elvis for Dad, since no new males seem to be popping up. The current list of Serena lions is as follows (perhaps including everyone, since I am nearing the end of my pictures): Alanis, Amelia, Aretha, Ben Folds, Bieber, Carole King, Coltrane, Daisy May, Denver, Emmylou, Elvis, Evacassidy, Fray, Gin Blossom, Hoobastank, Ingrid, Joplin, Macy Gray, Midler, Mumford, Murdoch, Nada, Radin, Regina Spektor, Script, Shakira, and Weepie. Twenty-seven total thus far, no young cubs. And, based on the evidence, I strongly suspect that Coltrane, Elvis and Mumford are a foreboding coalition of brothers that have taken over several of the lionesses, excluding those that hang out with Murdoch.

For a good portion of the rest of that evening, we sat in our car back in the bushes next to a leopard kill as it grew dark. Since Murphy died, the RA’s have been keeping extra tabs on Talek West, and have just recently returned to Prozac. Therefore, no one is very good at IDing them, so the transcription notes come out something like “There is an unID sacked out next to an unID, who gets up to lift leg for another unID, who then walks over and goes ears back for the first unID.” Thus, we felt our time might be better spent trying to track down this leopard and record it into the general carnivore census. It never returned for the wildebeest kill while we were there, but we turned out our lights to try and convince it to return. For once I was happy to be sitting in the middle as we started to talk about the possibility of wildebeest zombies and angry leopards jumping through the windows.

Sunday morning after breakfast, Brian took Lia and I to the bat roost just down the path from the kitchen tent. At least one hundred fruit bats hung upside down from an overarching tree, sleeping peacefully. I have come to really love bats since I’ve been here, after not having much contact with them at home. The two that hang in the lab tent are some of the most adorable creatures I’ve ever seen. They always sleep face-to-face, exactly as though they are hugging, right above the table during the day. Periodically they will stretch their little wings or yawn their dot of a mouth or swivel their enormous ears and look around with their fuzzy faces if disturbed, always to curl up into the other one again when finished. And I love watching them catch moths at dinnertime. It’s such a thrilling chase, the ultimate coevolutionary arms race at play, moths bigger than the bat’s head darting this way and that with the bat fast behind, doing loop-de-loops in the air until the moth evades or the bat has a new pair of wings coming out of its mouth. And what an amazing difference in the amount of bugs on the nights our bats are absent! It’s insane. I had an additional little bat pasted to my tent window when I went to zip it up a couple of nights ago. I think it hangs out under our awning sometimes.

Running on a Sunday means that kids are not in school, and so if you are a hard core exerciser and don’t want to stop and shake hands with a dozen kids herding donkeys and shoats (sheep + goats), it isn’t a good time to go. But I loved it. The first boy right by the road stared at me in disbelief when I stopped to shake his hand, and pretty soon all of his brothers and sisters were running in to say hello. It was wonderful, even if it did mean I had to cheat by stopping.

Kelsey came around during the day while we were all in the tent. This time, when I knelt down with some buttered bread, she stayed on my lap while chewing it, her tiny gray paws on my jeans, pointy face staring up at mine. It was magic. I am in love with that little genet.

Sunday night we found the big pride of Talek West. There are ten cubs, four females, and two adult males in total, and the cubs were play-ful! Gosh it was great watching them crouch down in the grass to pounce on each other walking by, romping around in the grass or jumping up onto Mom’s back so that she couldn’t help but join in a little. UNBEARABLY CUTE. And they had a poop fest; Dave would have gone nuts! Knowing this, I pushed for its collection, and Benson and Lia watched the lions while Brian, Eli, and I got out to search. The big males were lazy as ever, sleeping out of sight and of no danger. However, it was a little unnerving when one of the females about a hundred meters away noticed us, and we didn’t stray far, trying to search faster. But we knew it was time to give it up when I looked up and said, “Uh, guys, there’s an elephant right there.” Zoom, back into the car! A group of five suddenly emerged from behind a big row of bushes directly ahead. It was very interesting; there were four adult elephants and one baby probably around six months to a year old. While the lioness still had her eye on our car, probably trying to figure out why it had just spawned out of nowhere, the matriarch in front quickened her pace with ears out to the side, charging her with the baby close behind. The other three elephants followed suit in a line, and the lioness forgot us, threw her ears back and promptly fled. There is no being at top on the African savanna.

It must have been a night for charging carnivores, because a buffalo with a considerable limp when walking immediately forgot his ailment with two hyenas near, probably trying to convince them that he was no easy get despite the circumstances. He would run at them and stop, turn and limp his way back to the starting point, and run at them again. They paid him no attention and kept walking. I’m glad for the buffalo that they didn’t seem particularly hungry.

Two words: BUSH BABIES!!! Two bush babies came to dinner that night, and have been coming every night since. Just like the genets, it is a mother and her baby. We have dubbed “Triple B,” for “Baby Bushbaby.” ADORABLE. They are fuzzy and black (I was expecting gray, but I think I was thinking of pygmy bushbabies), with big eyes and oddly convoluted hands, and they jump around like they are on springs, from tree to tent pole to ground and back again. The only unfortunate thing is that Kelsey is kind of afraid of them, but we have been able to keep the peace so far. I swear I am going to die of happiness.

I will have to finish catching up later, because right now we are going to head to market day in Talek. One of the guys needs a haircut (there are like 4 barbershops in a town a fortieth the size of the one where I went to grade school...must have something to do with the shaved-head custom), and we need to get food.