Checking the tires

The Wildebeest hordes moved back down into the Seronera valley overnight last night. Michele claims that she heard Hyenas outside her tent, but I don't remember hearing anything more than some Zebra.

For our last full day in the bush, we got the band back together and rode in Leonard's jeep with Scott and Karan. It took no time at all before we were witness to the trials of life, Serengeti edition. There was a lioness feeding on a Wildebeest in an open field bordered on one side by the road and on the opposite side by a river; completely disemboweling the carcass; face completely in the abdominal cavity. In the field were at least 12 other lions. One of them had a tracking collar, so I wonder now if she's the same lioness with collar we saw the other day.

Anyway, as the one lion was going to town on her kill, a herd of Wildebeest made its way into the pride's killing field. The collared lioness and her 3 adolescent cubs perked up and stopped the herd in its tracks. There was a bit of a showdown and evidently the lioness was more interested in making sure the cubs didn't get stampeded than shopping for groceries. The herd abruptly turned around and left.

Not 10 minutes later, a Wildebeest calf entered the kill zone (Leonard suspected that maybe the dead Wildebeest was its mother) and despite the presence of fresh meat, the feeding lioness made a run at the calf but it was halfhearted and it got away. Shortly after that, another calf ran the gauntlet through the entire pride and miraculously made it. By now, the feeding lion had had her fill and sauntered over to rest in the shade of one of the jeeps that had parked on the road watching the spectacle. Leonard was repositioning his jeep and we drove right by her. She wasn't more than 5 feet away from me as we passed and I could hear her breathing heavy. As soon as we parked again, another herd of Wildebeest decided that they needed to get through there and stampeded through the killzone. This got all the lions' attention and I really thought I would see a kill, but again it was not to be. Leonard said that the Lions are very careful during these stampedes because it's very easy to get trampled or kicked. While all this was happening on the left side of the jeep, on the right side a single lioness was stalking a smaller herd of Wildebeest. She gave short chase but came away empty. I wonder what their success rate is? (Here it is).

We begrudgingly admitted that the show was over and the plan for the rest of the day was to go out into the plains to look for cheetah. We drove out past the Kopje where we saw the Leopard feeding on the Wildebeest the other day and out past all of the Wildebeest horde to the open grass plains where there was basically only various antelope groups; Thomson's Gazelle, Grant's Gazelle, Topi, Hartebeest, etc. Definitely Cheetah country. One funny thing we noticed is that certain members of the herd will take it upon themselves to act as lookout on top of old termite mounds or small rocks.

As we continued to drive out into the plains, we came across more of these kopjes. One in particular was the home to a pride of lions. There were probably 15 or so that we saw lounging on one rock or another, including one mother with a young cub, and some grizzly looking males with huge beautiful manes.

We packed box lunches for today and ate in the jeeps under the shade of an acacia tree a few hundred yards away from this kopje with all the lions. This was probably the least appetizing lunch I'd had since we arrived in Tanzania. You know what I saw under a tree as we left the kopje? A locked box with a padlock. Leonard said that researchers will place small cameras in these boxes to observe the cats that use these places as dens for having babies or as hides while hunting. That explains the padlock I saw under that other tree the other day.

After lunch, we headed out even further in to the plains; even past all of the kopjes. After a mile or so, all of the jeeps pulled up side by side and Leonard announced that it was time to "check the tires," which is bush speak for relieving ones self. Boys go to the front of the jeeps while girls go to the back. Obviously, the boys have no "pack in, pack out" issues with cleanup, but the girls do. There was discussion amongst the ladies in our jeep about how to contain and dispose of their cleansing materials. It was kind of funny. John warned us that this might happen back when we had our first Safari briefing, but we had gone all this time without needing to check any tires.

Scott and I joked that John, Kumbi and Leonard were taking us out this far into the middle of nowhere to kill us and bury us and almost at the same time we asked Leonard if that was the plan. The emptiness of this part of the Serengeti was amazing. There was nothing out here but us and the antelopes. Being as we were pretty far out and that it would take the better part of an hour or more to get back, we decided that we weren't going to see any cheetah chase any antelopes. As luck would have it, Eagle Eyed Leonard spotted a cheetah in the shade of a small bush. It was being stalked by 2 jeeps who had gone "off road." Apparently the "off road" permits here are very hard to get, and usually only granted to documentarians or researchers so those folks were very fortunate.

The last vignettes of the day were a small baby elephant nursing at its mother's teat and an orphaned or abandoned Wildebeest calf running in front of us down the road. The differences in the 2 scenes was so stark, with the heavily maternal elephants and the completely opposite Wildebeest. The beestie calf was doomed to predation or starvation; probably within a day or two.

We could see storm clouds gathering on the southern horizon on the way back to camp for our last night in the bush and sure enough it started raining while we were eating dinner and continued on pretty hard for an hour or so. It's hard to believe that we've been out here for over a week. It's awesome to know that we still have 4 more days before heading home.