Wednesday, 14 November, 2012

Today I’m feeling slightly forlorn, as the date marks six months since I arrived in Kenya.  Hump day, and I don’t want to start down the other side of the hill.  If only there were a tree to grab onto at the top I wouldn’t let go; yet even if there was, time shall not be outwitted, and would surely find a way to rotate the entire hill so that I’d end up at the bottom regardless.  I guess I’m just going to have to accept that half my time here has passed.

Just finished cleaning up a bunch of “Amigos,” the horrible cheetoh spin-offs that no one in camp can stand to eat.  They were stashed in the lab tent (perhaps we were hoping to discover another use), and some smart little vervet unzipped the tent!  It was open just to vervet height, and one leapt out as I approached.  But cheetohs had already been strewn everywhere outside, monkeys chomping on them, one coming up and grabbing handfuls, stuffing them in its mouth and grabbing more, glancing up at me and getting as much as it could before tearing off.  It clearly expected a reprimand, but really, they might as well eat the cheetohs-nobody else wants to.  However, my lunch is off limits.  Just after sitting down to eat I got up to put a chair in front of the tent, only to turn around and find a monkey on the table eating some of my cabbage salad!  That one I shooed away, before taking my lunch with me as I resumed fetching a chair.  Honestly, though, if I didn’t know how stupid it would be to feed a monkey, and if I wasn’t worried about the stomachaches that would ensue, I would have offered them the remaining three bags (two of which were opened).  As I sat back down to lunch, I noticed an approaching baboon.  He clearly had a more refined palate.  After scattering the vervets, he picked up a cheetoh, but that was the only one he ate before wandering off.

To move on to some large fauna accounts, before going back to the fisi we all know and love, there was one night out on obs when we were fortunate enough to view a leopard.  It wasn’t shy (unusual for the leopards around here!), and sat looking about while we photographed it.  Just as we were finishing up, Wilson calmly said, “Get ready, guys.”  I finished packing up my camera, and was about to ask him what he meant when I looked up to see an elephant charging us from about 500 meters away.  Not the sort of thing I expected based on Wilson’s inflection.  But he had waited for our cameras to be put away, cool as a cucumber, before tearing off, Benson dying of laughter at the ridiculousness of the elephant coming from so far away, ears out and comparatively puny tail pointed straight out from the middle of its huge bum as it lumbered speedily toward us, furiously trumpeting.  We made it away with plenty time to spare, all having started laughing hysterically as it charged by.  It kept going, now straight for the leopard.  The leopard just sat there as though a four ton mass wasn’t about to bowl it over; maybe it knew the elephant would do what it did and veer off at about 40 meters, merely to crash away through the lugga.  Poor thing though.  Wilson said it was surely one of the relocated forest elephants from a park where poaching is rampant.  It has every right to hate people, even when they are as far away as half a kilometer.

Continuing on with these two fantastic species, we pulled into camp after obs the night I returned from Nairobi, shortly to become the luckiest people alive.  Two small forms sat at the fork in our driveway, not thirty meters from camp.  I prepared myself to record the a genet sighting (we record all carnivore sightings).  As we pulled closer, I was surprised, because I thought they were hyena cubs and became very excited.  But that surprise was nothing when I saw what they really were: two tiny leopard cubs, not two months old.  I now know I can survive anything, because the amount of keeling over risk I endured at that moment is unheard of.  They were SO GORGEOUS and SO CUTE as to be indescribable, and what a thing to see! They bumbled about in the headlights, completely unafraid of the car.  One of them curiously approached it, preciously diminutive face in full view.  Their rosettes were perfectly miniaturized, just as beautiful as an adult’s.  I quickly called Charlie (who had remained back to drive Jack half of the remaining way to Serena), and he grabbed the guys before heading out, so everyone in camp got a look at them (minus Benson, who was sadly at home).  Joseph and Jackson were delighted; they had never seen such a thing.  It was a moment none of us will ever forget.  After about ten minutes of watching the cubs, we heard their mother calling and decided we should leave them be.  I have since heard her sawing voice during dinner or while in bed; to think that we have a family of leopards right in camp!  It’s too awesome to be real.  Leopards are the one animal in Africa that really and truly scared Jane Goodall; perhaps I should feel nervous, but pure delight is the only feeling I can find.

As for elephants, who have gratefully returned since the migration, there was a group of twenty or thirty over by Talek Lugga two nights ago.  I pointed in their direction as I often do (since I love elephants so much), and proclaimed that I thought there were probably a lot of hyenas in that direction.  But this time Wilson kindly obliged, and we drove over near the elephants.  I only hope the experience I had then happens when my mom is here, the way she loves elephants.  It was pure joy for me, sitting twenty to thirty meters from these elephants; it was every bit as though we were part of the group.  They pulled grass up from the ground with their long trunks, the sound of roots popping out of the ground deeply satisfying, rumbling their deep vibrato, babies wandering from one individual to the next.  It was as though we weren’t there, although I was pleased to observe that one elephant definitely took an interest in us.  She kept glancing in our direction, moving her trunk across the ground and up to her mouth without picking up any grass, as though she wanted us to think she was feeding.  One of the last ones to walk by had only one tusk.  It stopped to face us with its ears out – “Hey, where’d you come from?” I could imagine it saying; really I think it wanted to make sure we understood it is bigger than us.  But as it made no move to charge, I merely told it out loud that we are well aware of how big it is.  Then it moved on.  Finally, an elephant who speaks English!

We have had many incredible lion encounters over the past few months that have gone unmentioned.  One morning I had to stop and thank God for how blessed I am, because how many people get to sit right next to a group of lions feeding on a fresh zebra kill as the sun rises?  As it is the low season and was also very early, we were the only car watching them.  I photographed whisker patterns for Dave – one of the lionesses turned out to be Cascada from last summer!  The scar of an enormous gash across her left cheek makes her easy to distinguish.  Five other lionesses (most of them sacked out fit to burst stripes with the amount of zebra ingested) and one male cub were also present.  The male cub, who I presume may be Cascada’s given his behavior toward her, has one ear folded permanently back; he will likewise be easy to identify, and we have since come across the same group. 

I still can’t get over the interest that lions take in the hyena decals stuck to the side of the car.  I no longer have any doubt in my head that they recognize the shape, the number of times they stop to look at or even chase it about.  We found a group of ten young male lions (some actually quite big, but all oddly maneless) in Prozac territory one brilliantly sunny morning.  One of the males was restless, and suddenly approached the back of our car, eyes fixated square on the decal.  Eventually it walked past the car, and I returned to my futile attempt to photograph whiskers of these lazy loafs who a) refused to raise their heads (a common problem with IDing lions) and b) were obscured by bushy foliage.  Before long we began to slightly bounce, and looked back to see the same wandering male chewing on the back of our car!  I will admit to really enjoying the event, but we speedily drove forward and away; Kay doesn’t even allow hyena cubs to chew on the car.  I can’t imagine what she would have done to this lion, the rival of her favorite animal.  Then, driving back from picking up Jack before the Nairobi trip, we found a lioness with two of the most adorable cubs you can imagine, as well as the smallest lion cubs I have yet seen in the wild (probably about 1-2 months old like the leopard cubs),  walking along the road.  The cubs’ eyes were so endearingly disproportionate to their tiny bodies.  We stayed back to be polite to the two tour cars and looked through our binoculars, but those poor tourists.  The lion continued to walk conveniently down the road toward us.  When she was even with our car, originally walking all nonchalant, she suddenly startle-stopped.  She looked dead at the hyena decal and walked straight toward us; Jack swiftly rolled his window up (“just in case”).  She stared at the hyena from a foot away, and the strangest thing – her pupils very noticeably dilated and shrunk a couple times!  She might have stared longer had her cubs not mewed for her from the side of the road, and had we not decided that we should move as we were directly blocking the tourists.  Sorry guys - we’re just a wildlife magnet!