Monday, 20 May 2013

Hawk is a bamf, May 17th


Finally called Zoe and Mommy yesterday and got in some good chatting- mommy probably coming to visit last week of December and will likely stay up at serena lodge! Zoe is describing riding and carriage driving which made me very jealous- but I get to watch impala and topi grazing while the sun rises over the foggy mara river every morning so I can’t say much! Happy Zebra last night and I’ve pretty much got all those cubs down, there’s about half as many as at north and they are all very different ages so its much easier. North den cubs were scattered around 100m of the den, very difficult. Saw Ratchet, a male subadult for the first time this morning.

Tonight: Got to drive the Maruti for the first time! It is a small jeepy little car with a much more sensitive clutch and accelerator, but luckily I only stalled three times and that was while off-roading in the tall grass. Also got charged by an elephant- what an adrenaline rush holy shit. Especially in the tiny little maruti. We approached carefully but apparently 100 or 150m was too close and this big male started getting real huffy, flapping his ears and coming running at us. I reversed that little car real quick and thank god I didn’t stall. Also drove through a herd of buffalo. Drove practically underneath a giraffe and saw a black rhino off in the distance.

On the drive home we followed Hawk for a while who walks nonchalantly through the same herd of elephants who were still chilling out on both sides of the road. She lifts her head when she sees them and just keeps meandering down the road, the elephants seemed to get very nervous and moved away rather quickly. So they’ll charge me in a maruti, but a hyena walks up and they scatter? At least she cleared the way for us! Amazed at the balls that hyena has, a lone hyena is no match for even a small elephant. 

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