9:25, Wednesday, 3 August, 2011

I FINALLY SAW A SNAKE!!! We were out on obs watching Blue, Zenny, and Shadowfax, when suddenly we noticed a long black snake, probably a little over a meter in length, slithering quickly away right below our car window. I only got a glimpse of it, but it was enough of a glimpse to know that it was large and almost certainly venomous. I was so happy; it eased the pain of having missed the spitting cobra, and it wasn’t in camp - admittedly a relief. Unfortunately IDing the thing is near impossible with what we saw since there are oodles of black snakes in Africa. Blue jumped up as soon as she saw the snake, which disappeared down one of the Aardwolf Den holes. She moved off a ways and was very wary of the place it had been; Shadowfax followed her, but Zenny had gone out of sight underground. Thankfully she eventually popped out of the hole and joined her family unscathed. Blue’s strong reaction was probably a genetic adaptation, but I would love to know if she had previously had an unfortunate experience with a snake, or maybe learned the avoidance behavior from watching another individual.

On the drive back to camp, Benson very nearly ran over a prickly little hedgehog curled in up in the middle of the road like a misplaced sea urchin. He was distraught, and drove back to make sure it was okay; it had moved off, so we assumed it was. Benson endearingly inched along until he was sure we were no longer in hedgehog territory. Hedgehogs....so wonderful. However, as Lia pointed out, why in the heck in Sonic the Hedgehog a hedgehog? He looks nothing like one, not to mention he’s blue.

Monday morning we saw a few individuals from our lion pride. Brian and Eli have decided that I should keep naming lions after musicians, even though I am on the opposite side of the park. They really want one named “M.J. Memorial Lion,” so naturally, one of the big males is thus named, and they are nerdily excited every time we see him just so they have an excuse to say the name.

Talek was relatively quiet when we went to get groceries after obs; most of the kids must have been in school. However, there were about five little ones that came trailing after Brian as he returned from the butcher’s with a fresh cut of mbuzi (goat). They came smiling up to the window, and when I stuck my hand out, grabbed it and wouldn’t let go. It took about a minute to convince them to finally do so, and during that time I contemplated being strong enough to lift them all up by my hand and bring them in the window to take back to camp. Although, I suppose I would have settled for just the little boy who still wouldn’t let go even after the others had.

It was a gorgeous day the rest of Monday morning and early afternoon, the kind of day that makes you just want to sit outside and soak it all in. Some sort of bush right next to our tent has just begun to flower, and there are butterflies all over the place. They are white and look like cabbage butterflies until you see their undersides, which are yellow, black, and white striped. The fruit bats really enjoy these bushes as well; I witnessed one flapping stationary and eating from a flower like in a David Attenborough film the other night.

Aside from the butterflies and bats, Monday was a pretty quite day in the way of reptiles and mammals around camp. The regular monitor lizard hasn’t been here in a while, nor the baboons. I did see some vervet monkeys when I went running along the fire break; they were scared at first because I was moving so fast, but then seemed quite amused to watch me run to and fro. I haven’t been crossing the river since trying to jump over it after the rains. Definitely landed in the water. Not being able to see the bottom gives me the absolute willies, even if that spot wasn’t very deep. Beyond the median it was even worse, so I had to wade back across up to my thighs in the tennis shoes I had just spent an hour cleaning the day before. Typical.

Monday was also a day of vultures. In the morning there were about thirty of them flying over something as though caught by a tornado, twisting upwards in circles. Then on night obs we came upon an impala kill, and I discovered just how complex vultures are. There were probably around twenty of them, maybe three species represented (one being the lappet-faced vulture). There were also three marabou storks (another scavenging bird) and a jackal, all clearly standoffish towards the aggressive, fighting vultures. One of the vultures would approach the impala with its six foot wingspan held out to the side, turned so that the bottom of the wings were facing forward as though he was just going to bowl everyone over. Then he would walk with slow deliberate steps (probably trying not to fall) towards the impala, attempting to intimidate its conspecifics away from the food (fairly successfully I might add). Lia and I now have a dance intimidating the move; I can’t convey how funny it looked. Other vultures would bite and hiss at one another, snaking around their heads and making a boisterous racket. The wiser ones waited at the edge until the ruder ones were finished. I understand why the jackal was ears-back and nervous to go in to grab a bite; jackals are so little. But marabou storks have to shop at Big and Tall, and have a beak like a sword - strange that they didn’t even really try to intervene. The vultures pecked away at the empty eye socket and other openings in a way that made me slightly nauseous, but I am absolutely intrigued to know they have such complex behavior.