Even More Animals

Hello,

When we saw the wildebeest babies our guide told us, “It is the time for birth. Look at that one it is less than five minutes old. The afterbirth is still hanging from the mother.” I was hoping to see a birth, but no luck on that score I would have to settle for minutes old.

Later we saw a hyena dragging something about which our guide said, “That is dinner for tomorrow. He will hide it and then come back to it when he is hungry again.” I gather that an unoccupied armadillo hole would be a good hiding place.

I did ask our guide if there was anything that he would still like to see and he responded, “I have never seen an armadillo. They are nocturnal so I am not there at the same time.”

Before we left the park we saw a lone Oryx. Our guide commented, “I have not seen one of them in many years. It is a bit out of its territory.”

Another unusual sight was a large elephant herd. Apparently they are family groupings generally of about ten. The herd we saw had more than twenty in it. Our guide even took some pictures of them.

In the evening on the first day we saw a couple of young male lions heading back to their night territory. The next morning we saw those same two; at least we all thought it was the same two, heading in the opposite direction. Our guide informed us that they would go get a drink and then spend much of the rest of the day sleeping. We had not progressed very far down the road when we saw two more lions. These were young females walking across the road. I think our guide had better binoculars than we did to be able to tell the sex for sure. It was not long and these girls were walking faster. When we looked back we could see the males gaining on them. Pretty soon those ladies were lengthening out their stride and running. “Lions are very territorial,” our guide said, “Those females are probably out of their area.”

After a bit one of the females stopped running and returned to a walk. Then our guide said, “Maybe I am wrong and one of the females is in heat and she is teasing the males.”

We could not see what happened after that as they had gotten too far away to see clearly even with the binoculars. Was it romance or territory?

Paula