June 5, 2012
It’s been an exciting couple of days over here. Even on Africa Time, we’ve done a lot. Oh, hello Gavin & Andrea! Apparently some less than positive
consequences from the last blogger so they’ll be keeping an eye on me. Anyway, onto some politically correct fun
stuff.
Yesterday we went searching for the radio collar and its
attached Critter Cam. With the help of
two marvelous Naro San (the native people of this area) trackers, the willing
cooperation of one of the game ranch managers, and an aerial antenna with
extension poles, we recovered it in one day.
Granted, it was one day with about 5km of walking, but
still, we found it. We walked one area with
no luck. We’d about given up for the day
and the knee Annabelle took out was reminding me that it wasn’t 100%. We were in the car on the way back when we
found a high spot. We stopped, Andrea
hooked up the radio antenna and we listened with baited breath. Lo and behold, a beep! We’d been listening all day for that stinking
beep and there it was! All of us were
excited, Andrea, Caoilfhionn, me and both trackers. Excited enough we nearly left the GPS in the
truck. Now, the trackers knew exactly
where we were, but the veld here is fairly uniform and there’s none of the
helpful mountains we have in Arizona, so a GPS is a good idea.
Anyway, the trackers took charge of the antenna and attached
radio and followed the beep. For those
unfamiliar with radio collars, you can use you’re an antenna to find
directionality, the way of the loudest beep.
Forget the Tao de Ching, the Tao of beep is king in wildlife. It wasn’t a straight path, but we found
it. And by we, I mean one of the San
trackers. To celebrate, Andrea made two delicious
pizzas and we settled down to watch the Critter Cam video.
Well, there’s lots of video of the veld and a cheetah chin. Yup, hours and hours of cheetah chin. I am now very familiar with one cheetah’s
chin. There are about 30 hours of
Critter Cam footage from three different cheetahs and I’m told that watching
all of those hours, frame by frame, is one of our duties. I will be very familiar with cheetah chins by
the time I come back.
In terms of fantastic sightings, we saw loads of kudu,
impala, warthog, and gemsbok which are pretty common, some more eland, less
common. And yesterday, trudging through
the veld, we saw a herd of zebra. Now to
see that ever elusive cheetah!
Today we took down some of the equipment used to collar the
cheetahs and checked the camera traps.
Well, we were all quite absorbed in the camera trap and when we finished
that, we turned to the next bit of equipment.
Jane was yelling “Run!” before I really understood what I saw. Then she said “Cobra!” Well, bad knee or no, I ran. I have no desire to meet an angry spitting
cobra face to face. None. See one, yes, meet an angry one, no. Because what my poor eyes finally made out
before I fled, was a very, very large snake who had reared up. When a snake rears up, that means get the
heck out of Dodge.
Well, Phale (pronounced pol-LAY) went to investigate why we
were all upset. I went in for a photo,
staying further than spitting distance away.
Phale was not so cautious. He got
close enough to identify one gigantic black mamba that was climbing the tree we
were supposed to be working under. I
have a fantastic picture of the mamba in the tree with its front lifted up
trying to climb higher. It was about 2.5
meters long, probably 7-8 feet. It was
huge. I also have a great picture of its
tracks to the water and then to the tree.
It passed within less than 2 meters of us and we never saw it. Makes you
wonder how very much wildlife you just don’t see even when it’s right there.
Anyway, I’m trying to keep these, short, light and to the
point. That and I’m tired so, I hope you
enjoyed!
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