12:38, Monday, 29 July, 2013

Late November – Mid December (Continued)

I’m crazy about turtles and tortoises.  Although my dad would accuse me of saying such things about any and every animal (maybe he’s right…), there is indeed something special about Testudines to me.  So when Timothy showed up one day in camp, I was ecstatic.  Timothy was a baby leopard tortoise, about the size of my hand if it were greatly swollen.  We spotted him before evening obs.  Just when you think every animal imaginable has been found in camp, up pops another.  I made sure he got out of the driveway, but this time I walked behind instead of picking him up to avoid dehydration.  I could’ve followed him all evening, but there were hyenas to watch.  Not a bad trade. 

The trip to Nairobi was looming above our heads.  Charlie and I were excited, because my family and his girlfriend were coming to visit on Christmas, but the amount of time we would have to spend there prior to our guests’ arrival was dismal.  I called Ian around December 10^th to discover that we would have to leave by the 13^th to get the vehicles to him before his holiday.  That would mean spending almost two weeks in the city.  Ugh.  So when we set out for obs the night of the twelfth, we were not looking forward to coming back to camp, as we would have to leave our hyenas in the morning.  Little did we know we almost wouldn’t make it back.

It may have been the same night as the lions, I can’t quite recall.  Charlie, Wilson and I.  The famous adventurers.  Benson, our fourth accomplice, was helping out in Serena.  We had crossed the river and were searching for Fig Tree.  The sunset was absolutely spectacular, one side of the sky perfectly gorgeous and cloud-free with the fierce sinking red ball, the other a painter’s palette of unblended dark and ominous grays.  After stopping for some sky pictures (Charlie was always amused by my constant need to take pictures of the sky), we decided we had better get back across the river and start toward home.  Wilson did just that.  Then it came.  The sky released the rain of Noah, and we were driving in the heart of a massive storm.  Water leaked through the windows, torrents lashed the windshield.  The wind was insane, grass bowing and twisting whitecaps of the land.  I pulled my legs toward me, eyes wide with simultaneous horror and secret delight that we got to be witness to such a spectacle.  Charlie and I began assuring Wilson we would sleep in the car if he wanted to stop driving; trying to get back in this seemed completely futile.  But Wilson said he was fine, and heroically kept on.  Every moment we expected to get stuck.  After a half hour or so, my nerves were shot and my head aching from repeatedly checking on Wilson, who was rightfully getting short with repeatedly assuring me he was fine.  So I lay down in the back seat, scrunched between windows so as not to get wet, and watched the sealess tsunami enveloping us.  It took us hours to get home, and even now I cannot believe we made it.  Upon reaching the main road to Talek, we had to make a decision.  Should we risk Coucal and Middle Sunrise Lugga Crossings, or go all the way around, generally a more conservative route, but a way that would take at least another couple hours and therefore possibly be even more treacherous with the continued rain?  I voted for going around, but Wilson was certain we could make Coucal.  So he went as I prayed.  It was deep, and water swooshed over the hood of the car, making us curse and pray harder.  But Wilson was right; we went through it surprisingly easily.  We also made it through Sunrise Lugga.  Very nearly getting stuck in the driveway, which would have been unbearably insulting, we finally returned to our anxious friends in camp.  It was nothing short of a miracle.  Thank God/Allah/Krishna/the Great Spirit/Jesus/Nature/the intercession of Siddartha and Mother Mary for Wilson. 

The camp paths were flowing creeks, and we sloshed back to our tents following dinner, subsiding adrenaline and digestion awakening utmost fatigue.  The rain had become very light, but everywhere was dripping wet.  Our tents are supposed to be our dry refuges, somewhere we go to get away from the ever permeating wet and settle into our comfortable beds with dry socks on and warm Maasai blankets pulled up to our chins as we read before bed and listen to the sounds of the wilderness.  Every time this was violated during my stay, I felt as though I had no shelter.   So it was very unpleasant that night when I returned to a flood in my tent.  Apparently my tarp wasn’t holding its own, because the entire portion above my bed was sagging with water, dripping through the canvas ceiling and resulting in puddles on the floor around my bed and under my desk.  Thank goodness my laptop and camera equipment remained dry, but a couple books and clothes were wet.  Overall not bad, and I had to laugh.  I pushed off the water from underneath, dried the floor as best I could with my shower towel, and removed the top blanket on my bed, which was damp.  Then I stuffed things in my duffel for Nairobi, and cuddled into bed, wet things draped over my desk chair.  The short rains had arrived.

00:11, Saturday, 27 July, 2013

Late November – Mid December (Continued)

It was getting frustrating.  The lions and lionesses just wouldn’t lift their heads for ID photos.  Time and time again, even when tourists weren’t around and we waited for a good chunk of time.  Poor Dave; the individual column in the spreadsheet I kept for his large cat data was overloaded with “unIDlioness1” and “unIDlioness2” and “unIDsubadultmalelion”s.  It had to stop.

Well, I had brought along my harmonica to Kenya.  Good thing, since I literally dreamt the first week that I had a piano sent to the bush.  At least I still had some access to an instrument of sorts.  I do pity the birds, lizards and monkeys who had to hear me figuring the darn thing out – as a rule I tried to keep it to my tent or down by the river so no Homo sapiens heard.  But eventually I could play a solid two or three songs and a scale (nothing impressive by any means).  One day, on my tenth time playing “See This Man Before You Lord”, it hit me.  A novel sound was right at my fingertips.  Surely even lions would be curious enough to lift their heads if I blew a harmonica!  I felt like a genius, and began to pack my harmonica for each obs.

I waited a couple weeks until the opportunity finally arose.  I was out with Charlie on morning obs, when down near Euphorbia Lugga we found three full-grown males, no tourists in sight.  We readied our cameras, and it was time.  I put the harmonica to my lips and blew lightly.  Nothing.  Not even a flinch.  So I blew harder.  Nothing.  I could not believe that these lions just didn’t care that much; I mean, I understand being kings of the jungle and all, but really.  I blew out all the air in my lungs, and they just lay there sleeping.  We were flabbergasted, watching as they didn’t even so much as bat an eyelid. Yet there’s no way they had ever heard a sound like that of a harmonica before.  Eventually I just gave into the laughter and stopped trying. Suddenly I understood Ali the lion researcher’s absolute delight in coming with us on hyena obs.  Next time I’ll hire a whole drum line to stand outside the car with meat sprinkled atop the instruments.  Although honestly, that probably wouldn’t work either.

Another good half hour or so and we caught at least one side of each at intermittent stretches.  Yep, it turned out to be Mozart and his band of composers.  During one of the brief stretches that assured us he had not died, Mozart pulled his paws right into his chest as though hugging himself.  It’s such a paradoxical feeling when the fierce king of the jungle suddenly shows himself to be unbearably cute.

Our adventures with lions around that time continued.  One evening we were checking out Helicopter Crossing again, hoping it had become crossable so we could attempt to find Fig Tree.  We got out of the car and ventured down to the river.  It looked good!  I told Charlie and Wilson to head back up to the car; I’d be up shortly, but I had to pee quick.  So I did what I had to do, and climbed back up.  That is when Charlie, edged against the car, pointed; there were lions right there.  I looked over to see Wilson, who had also gone off to pee around 10m from the back of the car, face to face with a growling and hissing lioness.  She was not 20m from him, and he pulled out his panga as she mock-charged him with two leaps forward.  I yelled at him to just get back to the car, but testosterone or some other awful idiotic hormone must have told him otherwise.  He stood staring her down, provoking her.  I became furious in my fear for him.  This was ridiculous.  He was going to get hurt or hurt this lioness when he could just ease safely back to the car.  I was nearly shaking with fear as I started to step out toward him, with the aim of grabbing onto his sleeve and forcing him back toward the car.  I think he got how angry I was then, and met me halfway, at which time we all returned to the vehicle and got safely inside.  I cannot describe the feeling of adrenaline that had welled up inside of me, reminiscent of Radon's darting when the lionesses emerged from the bushes.  The fight or flight reflex is amazing.  Clearly that lioness must have been hiding cubs, or she wouldn’t have been so bold.  We drove around to get ID pictures of her and the other three lionesses back in the tall grass.  Our brave lioness flattened her ears and growled low as we drove past.  These ladies were near a mound that I suspected was actually part of a den.

What an evening.

19:30, 22 July, 2013

Hopefully the writer’s block I have been experiencing has run its course.  It’s time I stop evading and just write.  Bugger all if it’s not as good as I’d hoped.

Late November – Mid December (Continued)

Have you ever experienced something so beautiful it made you choke up?  I never thought I could be like my parents or my best friend, who tend to choke up at every birthday card or touching movie (sorry to blow your cover, Dad).  I wasn’t exempt from this happening to me, it just didn’t happen as often as it did with some people – until I went to Kenya.  There are some things there that just make you believe.  Like the stars.  I’ve written about the stars in the Masai Mara several times before, but I can’t stop.  It’s like trying to describe seeing a piece of God, and one just can’t stop because although there’s no way to put it into words, you can’t possibly let it go unsung.  One night in early December I was looking up as Charlie was driving us home, and it broke loose.  Luckily the conversation had lulled, so merely turning my head sufficed to keep him from seeing the teardrops suspended beneath my eyes.  Sometimes I hope that whatever heaven or the afterlife is, it’s a mirror of an untouched earth, predation free with every animal, plant, and person that ever lived here.  Then I saw those stars, and wonder if possibly there is another dimension with a backdrop even more beautiful.  I cannot imagine such a thing, and I love the natural earth so much I feel like a traitor suggesting there could be a place more beautiful, but it is my hope that describing some of the reactions those stars elicited in me will bring some of their glory more successfully than the inadequate synonyms for “exquisite” currently available in the English language.

One morning in Prozac we discovered what it was like to be part of a herd.  Driving along, we were suddenly enveloped in a group of topi running across the road.  It was quite the feeling, right up against all those brown and black streaks mixing together with each individual’s rocking stride.  The young topi of October had grown.  Their light brown fur was darkening so that their legs included a hint of black, their shoulders and hips and backs bronzing ever so slightly.  They also looked less like adorable baby female moose, their horns having erupted in little nubs.  While stopped and waiting for the herd we had been initiated into to finish running about us, we watched some of the younger guys turning toward each other on the road to test out their new horns in sparring battles, falling behind the adults.

False alarms were everywhere.  Clouds, but never any rain.  Day in, day out, 5:00 wake up time.   Day in, day out, crunch time during the day before returning to the hyenas at 1700 hours.  Glorious, really, but it must be noted that the transcriptions were piling up.  And it worried us to see a drought that didn’t want to lift.  One evening in early December, we set out on evening obs.  Charlie and Wilson went to Talek West, while Benson and I set off to find the Impossibles, who had again disappeared (darling Fig Tree).  The clouds rolled in, low and comfortable-like, so that the whole savanna felt wrapped in a blanket; all of the grass and balanites and animals seemed more one, smaller and closer.  Still, given the track record of the past couple weeks, we didn’t expect rain. 

So we kept on, nearly having a heart attack when we picked up Carol Doda.  Following the signal proved she was across the river.  So that’s where they had run off to!  We began to drive toward Helicopter Crossing when the others texted us of rain in Talek West.  Helicopter Crossing looked too steep, but we couldn’t pass up the chance to check Intrepid Lugga Crossing; this lead was too good to pass up!  And besides, there wasn’t rain where we were.  The vote of two was unanimous.  We drove on under the loving clouds, past herds of elephants.  I had to empty myself awfully, and we couldn’t find a place where no elephants were in sight, so eventually I had to settle for a distance of about 250m and crouch in the grass behind the car.  It made me miss my childhood dog Belle, as the evening resembled the cloudy ones of Michigan, and I used to crouch down to dog height and run through the tall grass around home.  None of the elephants noticed, and we continued on.  We found the crossing, but another text of “You guys should probably come in now, it’s still coming” sent us toward home.  Then it came, and we yelled in jubilation as the drops rolled down.  It took Benson much longer than normal to drive home, but he did a heroic job as we slipped and slid through the mud.  And somewhere around the Fig Tree/Talek border, we nearly hit it.  Benson swerved came to an abrupt halt.  I had no idea what was going on, until he got out and pointed to a hedgehog behind us in the middle of the road.  I tell you, if I ever feel half the love for a boy that I felt for that hedgehog, he’s in.  A real wild hedgehog, just as freakin’ adorable as you can imagine. I had only ever seen one briefly running about during IRES, and immediately ran over and crouched down by where it had gone to the side of the road.  Once it saw me there, it coiled into a tight ball.  I couldn’t help myself, and stroked its outward-pointed quills.  It fussed and spit, its quills popping out further as it rolled even tighter, a lively little brown and white cactus.  If only it could have understood how much I loved it, it wouldn’t have been scared for an instant.  Benson laughed and shuddered at the fact that I had touched it; a lot of Kenyans seem repelled by the idea of touching small wild animals.  We pulled ourselves away from the pokey tennis ball of joy and continued our journey home.  I think I e-mailed about everyone in my address book concerning that hedgehog the next day.

Taupe was a lovely mother; but of course, being one of Morpheus’s kids.  She had a great role model growing up.  We drove to Central Park Den one night to find her lying in the front vantage den hole, miniature Cindy Lou Who and Grinch stumbling and climbing all over her.  She nervously watched us for a bit.  It’s always nerve-racking when someone else discovers your treasure, but she settled down, and I saw something I hadn’t yet seen.  Taupe began licking the waste off of her babies, nearly knocking them into forward somersaults with her big tongue.  Their little squeals were hilarious, tiny tails forced upward with her nose and mouth smelling and licking beneath them.  Dave started talking about how humans probably did this at one point; after all, recycled nutrients.  Thanks for that thought, Dave.  Yummy.  Gotta love the extent of evolutionary advantageous behaviors.

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.

13:50, Monday, 17 June, 2013

Late November – Mid December (Continued)

There are many things we did that could finish the sentence, “There’s nothing quite like…” in the Mara.  And truly, there’s nothing quite like standing on a fallen log that juts out from a riverbank over a pool of hippos.  I had been to this particular pool before, but it had been 3+ years now, and the feeling upon returning was one of those strange ones that makes you feel like life is just a nostalgic search for good times and places of the past, and here was one such gem I had been searching for.  All four of us were out together, and Benson suddenly stopped by the pool.  I didn’t know where we were at first; all I perceived was a well-worn track off to the side of Fig Tree territory amidst a bushy area of the Talek’s riverbank.  But as he got out of the car and led us over toward the water, it clicked.  Beneath us, a pod of the most dangerous animals in Africa, so goofy-looking and acting as to make you wonder how an animal that makes smiles so effortless is also the one most likely to bite you in half.  I still remembered the first time I was there, on the Behavioral Ecology of African Mammals study abroad course the summer after my freshman year of college.  We were crouched down taking notes on hippo behavior.  Suddenly we heard the crazily loud, characteristically throaty belch of an enormous hippo, sounding as though it was right behind us.  Even one of our instructors admitted that she briefly thought we would die.  Thankfully the noisy big male we knew would take us to whatever comes post-Earth actually resided in a pool around the bend, one we were previously unaware of, still safely in the water.  I chuckled at the memory as I ventured further out upon the thick log, appreciating this new vantage where such scares seemed unlikely.  It seemed to me (perhaps erroneously) that a hippo would not venture onto a fallen tree.

The little things make each day its own, no matter where you are in the world.  Likely the same morning we went to the hippo pool, we saw a wee baby tommy fussing about.  It ran around within a herd of adult females, craning its head beneath each one’s udder in what looked to be a questioning manner, before moving onto the next individual.  At last, after several mistaken udders, he found his mother.  The little one knew her the moment he checked her, beginning to fiercely nurse from his beloved and long sought-after udder.  What a beautiful illustration of the biological bond between mothers and their offspring.

The frustrating lack of rain throughout November caused unwarranted excitement and expectation every time the sky showed even the smallest sign of cloudiness.  Early morning after early morning followed by evening after evening of work, no days off without self-imposed guilt, were enough to wear us out and beg God to shed some tears. One evening we were positive it must rain.  The entire sky was blanketed in bluish-gray clouds, a feat even in the rainy season.  Maybe the much closer, very white clouds that strikingly stood out from the blue-gray, drifting over it in the most ethereal, eerie and exquisite way should have clued us in that these weren’t normal rain clouds.  Indeed, they gave us not a drop, but what a show and a feel that blanket with thick white wisps gave to the savanna.  It felt like the sky was a warm ocean over our heads – an ocean with sustained white-capped and slow-moving waves.  It was all so otherworldly and peaceful, giraffes’ necks reaching up so that their heads were even with the lowest of the cloud waves.  Then, out of nowhere, we were attacked.  Don’t worry though; it was an attack of cute.  Because it just doesn’t get cuter than nursing and yawning baby bat-eared foxes.  Little puffs of love with gargantuan ears – what a find that was, back on one of the short grass plains that used to be long pre wildebeest and drought.

The morning following the white-capped heavens brought fog.  We couldn’t see over 10m ahead and behind.  Droplets jeweled more spider webs in the tall red oat grass of Fig Tree than you would think could possibly be woven sans an overpopulation of the eight-legged carpenters, and yet somehow the silky whorls didn’t seem at all crowded.  Billows of pure cloud visibly diffused into the windows of the car, floating through and filling it, surrounding us in chilly mist and serving to keep us awake.  Not a great day for chasing down an alien male in an attempt to get pictures, so of course we found one.  His left ear was damaged wonderfully, reduced so that it appeared to be a lopsided “3” with its innards filled in.  Alien 413, and we all hoped he’d stay with such a telltale ear.