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Published: March 8th 2008
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Kudu Porn
Let's get it on! Elephants Gone Wild
We started the day off lazily - coffee on the patio watching a little local family of warthogs stroll the fence line a few feet from us, glassing (with binoculars) and photographing the zebra, wildebeest and kudu that roam the valley floor within our view.
Side Note - a couple of days ago I was watching a kudu couple whispering sweet nothings to each other though my camera lens when the male took it to the next level by mounting his lovely companion for about 10 seconds of “kudu style” lovin. It seemed awfully brief but I swear I saw a smile on his face. Damn right I got pictures (included) but I was so surprised by the turn of events and used to constant kudu companionship that I was not set up to take good photos. Probably for the best and in the interest of their privacy those things are a bit blurry.
In other words, we were letting the game come to us instead of the other way around.
Only slightly less lazy was our next activity which was a visit to a crocodile preserve where we had no difficulty taking pictures
because the animals were in, well, enclosures I will call them. Big ass Nile crocs that are about as fierce as Bambi since they are fed every day at 4:30 whereas they can go as long as a year between meals in the wild (according to one of the little placards adorning the path that we followed through the area.
Notably, the biggest and baddest dude in the place was a 100-plus year-old Croc who killed at least five other males before the keepers put him in a huge area with 20 females and no other boys. Since then he has been mellow (Dave suggested he might be Muslim and had achieved the many virgins falsely promised to martyrs). His name was Arnold Schwarzenegger. I am not kidding. To entertain us, a worker poked him with a stick and he made a great show of teeth and noise before slipping into the water to choose his concubine for the evening (actually, they apparently only get randy once a year - damned waste of a sweet setup for old Arnold if you ask me).
We returned “home” and embarked on another self-guided game drive which provided the best entertainment
of the day. A huge bull elephant was in musk charging around in search of a mate (the gals were having none of it - we later saw a pretty big herd heading at high speed away from his location). Horny male elephants are very, very grouchy and this one decided to either take out his frustration on or possibly mate with an unlikely victim - a tiny subcompact clown car stuffed beyond capacity with a family of six (mom, dad and 4 terrified children). We were kind of hoping for disaster so we could sell our photos to the tabloids for millions but we sought out the family later to hear their tale and they were really quite nice so we felt a little guilty about that. Some of the girls appeared to have acquired a nervous tick. Kidding (I rarely use the “kidding” device in writing but I gave my blog address to the father so he could see the photos and he might be reading this).
Later we came across a very polite young elephant that strolled up to within a few feet of us and munched happily on grass for quite some time. He was
aware of us and made playful gestures at us from time to time. He is the subject of one of my favorite elephant photos - included here - which depicts what I think is an elephant wink using one ear instead of an eye.
I love elephants: smart, gentle (usually) and nearly invincible. The good news in Africa is that they are largely coming back in a big way from near decimation at the hands of poachers. The bad new is that they are victims of their own success. While we were in SA, the government announced that they were going to cull a number of the beautiful creatures because they had become too numerous. Out of sensitivity to the strong family bonds they have and knowing that young elephants who manage to survive being orphaned fail to learn how to behave properly, they will kill whole family units rather than old bulls. Sad, sad, sad.
Hemingway wrote about an elephant hunt in The Garden of Eden. I read excerpts of it in a book on the writer’s time on the Dark Continent while we were in the bush. It describes a hunt through the eyes of a
child who initially helps guide the hunters to a great old bull but then views this as a betrayal of the animal and vows to keep everything a secret from then on.
“There was no more true elephant, only the gray wrinkled swelling dead body and the huge great mottled brown and yellow tusks that they had killed him for. The tusks were stained with the dried blood and he scraped some of it off with his thumbnail like a piece of sealing wax and put it in the pocket of his shirt. That was all he took from the elephant except for the beginning of the knowledge of loneliness.”
I hunt and believe in hunting as an appropriate teacher of the natural order of things. I also believe that hunters are the worlds’ greatest conservationists. I understand the need - on an intellectual level - for killing some to prevent many more slow deaths from starvation, disease and overgrazing. But I can’t understand how a person could pull the trigger on one of these creatures any more than I understand whaling or killing one of the great apes. There’s a point when an animal is intelligent enough
to understand what is happening to it and for its family to know loss. Just sad. Hemingway realized it too. On his second and last African safari, he largely put down his gun, shooting only to fill the “pot” with lesser creatures who exist to be food for all within the ecosystem (lousy job - those antelope should have stayed in school). Many of this Century’s great white hunters did the same by the twilight of their lives.
So we followed the maxim of today: we left only footprints and we took out only memories and photographs.
It’s over now. Our plane is west of Bermuda as I write this and, from the feel of the chop and the popping of my ears, we have started our descent. We are racing the sunrise to Atlanta and - even at 500 mph - it is gaining on us. The group started to dwindle in Josie when Mom peeled off to head back to Rooi Els. Dave and Amanda are on the plane but many rows away which constitutes a different world on an airplane. Adam and Cathy are to either side but Adam will leave us post-customs to return
to Annapolis. Ollie and Sophie await us at home and I can’t wait to see my big lug. He sniffs me head to toe and shows great disapproval when he detects another dog’s scent on me so I can’t wait to see what he makes of the animal reek that currently pervades my luggage.
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