My alarm clock when off at 3:25 this morning. This was, sadly, no accident. We had a morning game drive to catch at four a.m. It would last three hours and we were supposed to see rare animals like leopards, genets, servals, and caracals.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t see any of those cat-like animals, but we saw three others: lions, hyenas, and cheetahs. The first we saw of these was a spotted hyena, which we saw after a marabou stork, steenbok, and some impala. It was walking towards a family of six cheetahs (a mom and her five cubs). The cubs were a few months old. Martie, our guide, said that the group she took on the morning drive the day before hadn\u2019t seen the cheetahs, so she didn\u2019t mention it to them when she stopped by their car after we saw the two female lions dozing on the road.<\/p>\n
They moved off, but it wasn\u2019t because they were intimidated by the two barking African wild dogs. \u201cI don\u2019t know what to say because I\u2019ve never seen anything like this,\u201d Martie said. \u201cUsually wild dogs just move away from lions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later on the tarred H4-2, Martie pointed out a bird and said, \u201cWe rangers have funny little things for birds to help us remember their names, like this one. We say it goes, \u2018My mother is dead. My father is dead. Everyone is dead dead dead dead.\u201d (\u201cDead dead dead dead\u201d is the sound the bird makes.)<\/p>\n
So our total before 7 o\u2019clock this morning was\u2026<\/p>\n
1,000 impala
\n15 baboons
\n13 African elephants
\n08 nyala (\u201cThey aren\u2019t usually seen this far south,\u201d Martie said)
\n06 cheetahs
\n02 spotted hyenas
\n02 African wild dogs
\n02 lionesses
\n02 African fish eagles
\n01 bushbuck
\n01 common duiker
\n01 brown snake eagle
\n01 magpie shrike<\/p>\n
Ciao!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My alarm clock when off at 3:25 this morning. This was, sadly, no accident. We had a morning game drive to catch at four a.m. It would last three hours and we were supposed to see rare animals like leopards, … Continue reading