More Animals

Hello,

After Leroy and I ate lunch sitting on the hill looking out over the lake watching three elephants meander around, we got back in the Land Rover and headed out once more. I haven’t mentioned them, but we did see yellow baboons and velvet monkeys. There were also a number of birds that our driver could identify and a number that he could not. Some of the identifiable were ibis, a very large gray goliath stork, ducks, black headed crane, weavers, snowy egret, jarande, yellow beaked ox pecker, a yellow necked … Oh what was that called? We cannot remember.

Then there was the baby elephant that came up to mama as she was grabbing a grass lunch and helped himself to a long liquid lunch too. Oh was I sorry that the camera did not work then. We were so close probably only about 10 feet away.

As we were driving along we arrived at a little bridge that had short sides. Two zebra were approaching the other side of that bridge. Our driver slowed to a stop and announced, “Animals have the right of way.” He also told us that noise would scare them.

One zebra, after some hesitation crossed the bridge and, avoiding the steep drop off, walked quite close to us, perhaps only about three feet away. We waited for some time for the second zebra to come across. First it merely looked at us. Finally our driver started moving; initially the zebra turned away, but immediately turned back and nervously walked to the bridge so the driver stopped with us almost on the bridge. Greatly agitated the zebra came closer, turned in a quick circle, glanced around nervously, stamped the ground, backed up, circled, came back, shivered, backed up, circled, stamped the ground and came across the bridge shaking as it was forced to walk almost against my side of the vehicle to get past. It was so close I could have reached out and touched it. It raced off as soon as it was clear. It was only then that we all let out our breath and said, “Wow!”

Paula

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