19:27, Wednesday, 25 July, 2012

I cannot believe the migration has not yet exploded.  Last year at this time the wildebeest were everywhere; this year the biggest herd I’ve witnessed consisted of about 300 individuals.  True, there are now zebra everywhere where before there were none; they tend to come first, so hopefully the troops are still on their way.  Unfortunately, the Tanzanian government allows great burns of the Serengeti Plains along the wildebeests’ path.  These burns are intended to slow the migration, keeping the wildebeest in Tanzania longer for the benefit of the country’s tourism industry.  From what I hear, the burns have been exceptional this year.  Can we ever learn to just leave things alone?  Is it really that hard?

I sure love having the zebra return.  They are beautiful animals, and rekindle the love I’ve always had for equines.  Their stripes are something truly amazing; they struck me the other day the way underappreciated things sometimes do.  Sure, zebras are black and white striped.  But no!  It’s more than that!  The stripes swirl and thin and thicken in all the right places, swaying in long arcs across the body to join fluidly in a pin-prick, invisible spot.  The lines on the face are thinner and flow out slightly around the eyes, only to converge beautifully into a velvety black muzzle.  These animals are a work of finest art, each unique.  Yesterday we came upon a female whose white stripes were much thicker than her black ones – anyone who saw her would settle the age-old question and assert that zebras are white with black stripes.  I’ve never seen a zebra like her.  Looking at a group of zebra, I get the feeling I’m looking at an optical illusion, the type of photo where the stripes start to blur together until you can no longer distinguish them.  If this occurs with my primate vision, the best in the mammalian kingdom, I have a hard time doubting that the evolution of stripes had something to do with predator evasion.  The newest hypothesis involves flies; supposedly zebra stripes work to dissuade flies in some way or another – who knew? 

If the adults aren’t cool enough, baby zebras are to die for.  Brown fuzz robs them of being anything but adorable – they cannot earn the artistic title bestowed by a magnificent sheen of their older counterparts, but they don’t need it.  CUTE!  Itty little heads and gangly proportions.  On the 22^nd we had to stop and oggle over a tiny one, pulling out our cameras.  Then, with all the classiness of the horses I’ve always known, it promptly posed in a pooping stance, remaining that way for what seemed like forever before darting off after its mother.  Typical.  Some of the baby zebras are hidden inside their mothers, and the poor females look like they’re going to pop, their bellies bulging with the fetus so that it looks like an enormous egg got lodged horizontally between their shoulders and hindquarters.  It pokes out awkwardly on either side and bounces up and down like a water balloon when they trot, appearing most uncomfortable.  We’re nervous driving up behind pregnant zebras on the road, worried even a slight startle will send them full-blown into untimely labor.

21:35, Friday, 27 July, 2012

Well, I hold the title.  Although Tyler and Charlie have both attempted to beat me, I have still eaten the most food in one sitting.  We have pancake wars; Joseph cooks up a gajillion delicious cakes.  Hungry as all get-out returning from obs, we tear in like we’ve been starved for a week.  I ate 12 ½ today, beaten only by Tyler’s 13 and Charlie’s 13 ½, but when adding in the four mango slices and one sizeable bit of pineapple I ate, I was the reigning champ.  And had there been more pancakes left, I probably would have run them even further into the ground.

I was all excited to announce, for my parents’ benefit, that it appeared the snake epidemic had ended.  Earlier in the week I noticed that our slender mongoose is hanging around again, and our slithery friends hadn’t been seen since I last watched the potential mamba slide past my tent.  I thought Mom and Dad might rest easier, plane tickets already bought and no turning back.  But Tyler’s unhappy “Ohhhhhhh, theeeeere’s a snake” two days ago has stopped that message dead in its tracks.  It’s the same one I saw before, headed toward my tent!  At least a meter and a half long, thick, gray-black. I yelled for the others to come see as it slid toward the back of the log outside my tent, the same spot it fancied before.  It was scared out of sight by the time Julie, a reluctant Tyler, and Ian gathered behind me.  However, about five minutes after they dispersed, as I sat on my bed working with the window unzipped to the screen, I watched it explore the log where I sit to brush my teeth (or rather used to sit).  Thank God for the sock that tightly closes where the zippers on my tent meet, because that snake poked its head out from under the log and looked curiously right at me, two feet away through the screen.  It might have thought my tent a fun place to explore had that blessed sock not been in place.  But really, that snake has been hanging around and we haven’t even known it.  All I have to do is be careful to make enough noise around my tent; it’s clear he/she wants to avoid confrontation.  And who knows?  Maybe it’s not even a mamba (kind of thrilling to think it might be though!).  Either way, I’ve named it to help its reputation.  (Names work wonders.  On my first trip to Africa, I saved a spider from my tentmate by having her name it.  She might be able to bring herself to harm any old spider, but she couldn’t harm Albert.)  I thought “Mo” would be a nice name for the mamba in question, but then I couldn’t resist Tyler’s suggestion of “Mia”...Mamba Mia.  Mia it is.

My ID’s have finally come together.  With my new binos sent from home, I can whip them out much faster.  The night still brings a challenge, especially when our maglights refuse to hold a charge at the den, where bushes complicate things enough in the daylight as is.  The other night we were watching the hyenas around one of the den holes, only to look down and check ourselves on a couple ID’s in the book.  When we looked up, the hyenas had been replaced by warthogs!  Where not two seconds before there had been hyenas, now the headlights shown on two warthogs that must have popped out of the den hole, the surrounding darkness swallowing the hyenas (unless our hyenas are actually transformers, in which case the secret it out and we need to define a new shorthand for the behavior “turns into warthog”).

Den succession is actually a very interesting topic.  I can’t remember the exact progression, but I know that hyenas don’t dig their own dens, instead stealing them from warthogs, who steal them from someone else, etc. right on down to the actual digger (whose important identity has slipped my memory).  Just this morning at Shit Show Den (aptly named), a warthog’s ears and head poked out of the hyena-less den hole.  It stayed like that for a couple minutes, hilariously staring at us while Nora snapped pictures, then all of a sudden pew! pew! pew!; the hole spouted three warthogs that tore away, tails in the air.  I never get tired of warthog-spewing den holes.  Gets me every time.

Be careful where you pee, especially if it is behind a large bush whose other side you cannot see.  Lesson number 5,000 in the book How to Relieve Yourself when Living in the African Bush.  I was following an earlier lesson while out on obs the other morning, namely never pee around an elephant that might freak out and charge you (common sense).  But in my avoidance of the elephant, I drove to a large bush appreciably far away, asking Julie to please keep an eye on the elephant and yell if it was in any way perturbed.  Never mind that Parcheesi might be sacked out right behind my carefully picked bush.  Poor Parcheesi, I gave her quite a scare!  Needless to say I decided to just wait, and popped back in the car to record her identity and the location of the infamous bush.  Geesh, can’t pee on the savanna because of tour cars.  Can’t pee near the lugga because of elephants.  Can’t pee in the bushes because of Parcheesies. 

On the morning of the 21^st, we came upon Lust and Sloth wandering about Lone Tree Plain.  All of a sudden, Sloth happened upon a hiding baby tommy in the grass, and I don’t know as I have ever seen anything so adorable as a cub hyena chasing a baby tommy.  It was miniaturized life!  I felt like I had gotten a lightning bolt in MarioCart and everyone around me had shrunk, including an adult hyena chasing an adult tommy.  Baby tommy got away, and Lust and Sloth returned toward the den, but not until after a good sprinting chase.

That same morning we saw Loki wandering with the entire carcass of an adult male tommy.  I’d never seen a kill so intact.  It’s entire head, back legs, and all the hide in between were present as it hung limp in her mouth, staring at us blankly upside-down.  Turquoise, Tellaviev (sp; our newest male), and Harlem followed Loki around like the cars of a train, but she wasn’t about to share.  Lucky for her Helios was nowhere to be seen.

I am meeting adult Fig Tree hyenas at last!  Compared to before, they are everywhere in their territory now.  I find their clan cozy compared to Talek West.  It’s about half the size, and the territory’s tall grass makes it feel peacefully quiet, removed from the areas of shorter grass more prone to tourists.  I love all of the Fig Tree hyenas, but as far as adults go, I have a special like for Lu (Lucy).  She is not nervous around the car like the others.  I don’t see her aggress too often, but yet she doesn’t take crap.  She’s the equivalent of a strong, reasonable but fearless woman in a world awaiting her.

As far as other animals go, we finally have two resident cheetahs!  I can’t remember what Tyler has named them (I’m having him help me with the big cat stuff for Dave), but they are both very handsome males – so handsome that, sadly, one of the times we saw them they were being totally hounded by about 30 tour cars, each violating the space limit a little more than the last to try and get in front.  It’s a tough problem; I just wish the rules were enforced more strictly by the park management like they are in our sister part of the park, the Mara Conservancy.  Aside from cheetahs, the resident lions have totally shifted since last summer; in just one year, I’m not recognizing any of them!  Pictures prove there is a whole new pride hanging around where only twelve months ago was firmly in the hands of M.J. Mewomorial, Mick Jagger, Kanye and their lionesses.  Now, in even more support of a total shift, the only lion I have recognized in Talek West is David Bowie, who lived way out in Prozac last year – an hour’s drive away!  There are some major overthrows going on somewhere.  It’s a shame no one is more seriously studying lions in the Mara.  Final non-Crocuta species account: baby banded mongooses = SQUEAK! (A.K.A. beyond adorable).  Imagine them, then multiply the cute by ten and cube it.  That’s what we saw a few days past.

I can’t believe the IRES boys, Nora, and Julie will be leaving in just over a week.  It really saddens me, the realization hitting me a couple evenings ago as we sat around the table playing banana grams, spoons, BS, and poker while Maina fixed the cars.  August already! I’m becoming afraid to blink my eyes should my plane be waiting when I open them!