Week 8 - Dangerous Animal Knowledge

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Two weeks of waking at 5.30 and I’m still not used to it, at least the daily commute only involves walking to the shower, mind out for snakes and scorpions, and then down to the main lodge. The resident bushbuck and its baby like to wait in ambush on the path which can be a bit disconcerting if you brave the walk to the toilet in the middle of the night. Rio swears she has a zebra stalking her which leaves only its tracks outside her tent each morning.

In addition life has got serious with a Monday exam each week, luckily both Sandra and I passed (me with higher marks obviously). The exams so far covered the basics of guiding, orientation and vehicle skills as well as a detailed one on Dangerous Animals (the Big 5 plus hippos, spotted hyena, croc and ostrich?!). We also had a number of night drives which each of us had to take turns as lead and tracker. Chris had already excelled in his first drive by having to reverse quickly away from a large female elephant but the best was yet to come. He must be destined to be one of those lucky guides because just after the most beautiful sunset he found us the family of lions including 3 very boisterous cubs which were big enough to look pretty menacing when they started stalking the vehicle, walking right up to the driver’s door and making us all lean a bit more into the centre of the vehicle.

I’m now a wealth of knowledge on mating and territorial behaviour of the large dangerous animals and their gestation period, testes location and anal pasting routines. This should help me avoid getting into sticky situations while walking around these animals or at the very least know how to spot if a hippo is about to dung spray so I can duck/close my mouth. Unfortunately the training came too late to resolve a run in we had with ‘Dagga Boy’ last week. We had stopped for a braai (bbq) by the river and had just set up some fishing lines when Dagga Boy snuck up on us from behind. Cue pandemonium while the miserable old male buffalo snorthed tossed his head and mock charged the Land Rover. Schalk got into the vehicle as Dagga Boy faced him down. The cantankerous bovid then horned the canoes off his favourite patch of grass so he could have a nibble while we stood on top of a hill behind our fire and watched. I was just praying he didn’t step on my fly rod.

It’s really a privilege to wake up every day in this environment; to smell the freshness of the early morning herbs and to listen to the birds. I’m even starting to recognise one or two of their calls which gives the world around so much more meaning. Its one of those situations where the more you learn the more you find to learn. There are so many interesting things about not just the bigger game. Lifting up logs looking for scorpions the other day I found a hibernating brown house snake, it was a gold-brown colour and was curled up fast asleep waiting for summer to start. So far the scorpion count is relatively low although we did find a granulatis which is reputedly the most venomous scorpion in sub-Saharan Africa. There are loads of boomslangs about as well which are strikingly pretty with the large eyes and bright green colour, venomous but they are not at all aggressive. Even the mice we have running around our kitchen are interesting - golden brown with two striped down their back - they probably aren’t so keen on the snakes. Next week is rifle handling so looking forward to painful shoulders…..

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