11:21, Tuesday, 18 June, 2013

Late November – Mid December (Continued)

Fig Tree.  We couldn’t find them.  And it wasn’t for a lack of trying.  Charlie and I went out one night without much hope.  Yet hope, never hard to reignite in myself, awaited us.  Rohan!  We found Rohan all alone, fat, lumbering along the high road on the north side of Buffalo Lugga.  Rohan!  The clan’s highest ranking female.  Rohan!  Whose spots were fun to match because although she had some lovely patterns, they were faded with age.  Thus we knew Fig Tree was in fact still more than just Einstein, and our hearts started pumping, but combing the area for others was to no avail.  Dark fell, a glorious moon arose, we still hadn’t seen anyone else.  Once we reached Buffalo Lugga, I saw some eye shine on the other side.  The eyes looked a bit big for hyenas, but I could tell they were of a carnivore.  Lions perhaps.  So I drove over to cross the lugga.  That’s when I nearly ran into an elephant, moonlight illuminating its thick gray outline; I was glad for the moonlight, and even gladder for the company of such marvelous creatures.  A herd of them was dispersed all along the lugga, making crossing it a bit challenging.  They even met us on the other side.  Once through the elephants, we found the lions.  It was Cascada, with four other members of her Prozac/Fig Tree pride, including her son Chumbawumba.  I was happy to see them.  We drove around, doing our best to get pictures of the stubborn beasts who seemed to play games with us by turning their heads just as we were about to snap the perfect shots.  Cascada and Chumbawumba never needed pictures, the right side of Cascada’s face still deformed from what we guessed to be a tussle with a warthog, and Chumbawumba (minus the fact that he was always with his mother) with his left ear permanently folded back against his head.  How he had grown!  Whereas in October he had barely any fluff to enlighten us on his sex, now he had the considerable starts of a very blonde mane.  I loved knowing so many individual animals, recognizing them and acquiring snapshots into their daily lives, watching them grow.  One of the many great rewards of this job.

The lions were fat and lazy.  Clearly they had just eaten something.  Had they killed it themselves?  Probably not.  Charlie started picking up Einstein’s collar a little further down the lugga.  We could hardly hold still for our excitement, and panicked every time we nearly lost the signal, driving to and fro.  The giggles of nearby hyenas helped us know which way to turn, anticipation mounting.  And so we found them!  Fussing over a dead wildebeest, originally thought to be a snake as the remains Lu chewed on consisted mostly of stretched out skin, and most of which had likely been thieved by our Panthera leo friends.  Moma, still alive!  Another Foxtrot story, mother having assumedly died as her sibling Smithsonian disappeared, and the night of the aardvark we happened upon her skinny form eating alone on a most unappetizingly disintegrating wildebeest carcass.  Lu, Moma, Marlin, Einstein, Fort Worth, Nikk, and I met the beautiful (but rude and bossy, exercising her rank often) Mordor.  They were alive!  We labored over ID’s, poor Charlie always stuck transcribing nights in Fig Tree where we would end up driving in a thousand circles to get everyone, the Fig Treeites as yet much harder for us to recognize than our Westies.  The action eventually slowed, we had everyone IDed, and we drove home with smiles and animated talk, for once not thinking about Joseph’s waiting dinner.  As though in applause, we ran into Rohan waddling to the northwest further along the high road, her shape and faded spots limned by the cloud-dimmed moonbeams.