Location: Ewaso Nyiro River Camp, Mpala Wildlife Conservancy, Laikipia Valley
Friday the 13th was . . . interesting.
We got going a bit earlier the morning so we could perfect our animal behavior experiments. My group got assigned the dikdik (a small deer-like creature the whole class has been obsessed with all week) while the other group got assigned the red-headed agama (a type of lizard). Team Dikdik came up with about a dozen different behaviors (fleeing, standing vigilant, laying down, mating, scenting, etc.) that we could potentially observe in the field. The professor J showed up late to our discussion and proceeded to spend 20 min criticizing our observation methods which I think everyone was a bit irritated about.
Team Dikdik broke up into 3 groups of 3 in order to study 3 pairs of dikdik (they are strictly monogamous and are never without their mate). My trio consisted of myself, Z and undergrad K. C dropped us off where we spotted 1 dikdik dart off into the bush. We spent the next 20 min chasing half a dozen of the mini antelopes through the brush. This did not work as it appeared we were not nearly as stealthy as we would have liked to think ourselves. We tried a new approach; K and Z sat in the bushes while I tried to sneak around and flush them out: Fail. (K and Z saw maybe 1?)
Next, all 3 of us hid in the bushes at what we knew to be the edge of dikdik territory (according to the dung mittens--aka piles of tiny dikdik poo pellets): Fail. (We saw nothing except obnoxious zazu birds which proclaimed loudly that we were intruding) We wandered deeper into the bush before we realized that this probably wasn't a very good idea considering we had neither C nor an ascari with us--we didn't even have a cellphone or a radio or a whistle! So we returned to the ranch house where C had dropped us off where we set up another stake out on top of a water cylinder--or rather K and I did while Z napped. Regardless, Fail. Then C showed up and we kind of gave up which he didn't quite encourage but certainly didn't discourage either. I did some yoga on top of the concrete cylinder and it felt very very good; I should be doing that every day.
So we ended up with no real usable data, but a much better appreciation for wildlife observation and for wildlife behaviorists everywhere.
We hung out after lunch in the camp, again. A and Apollo de-dened a huge tarantula in the yard and C finally went to release the chameleon (although we learned later that he gave it to someone at the research center). K and W went to meet with R and the ranch manager Mike and take Nicholas back to the group ranch.
We headed out for a game drive and sundowners at the dam. The big thing was having beers with the profs, but we ended up seeing a lot of "game" (which spawned the phrase "got game?"). The car situation kind of stressed me out--the drivers apparently took 1 of the 3 Land Cruisers to Nairobi so we only had 2 vehicles for all 15 undergrads, the profs and their families. I ended up getting pretty panicked by the close quarters and ended up standing the whole way there and back.
We saw a lot of dikdik, giraffes, elephants, Grant's gazelles, impalas, plains zebra, Grevy's zebras (which it turns out look a lot like donkeys from afar). The class had beers with the profs on a cliff overlooking Laikipia (lie-kip-ee-ah) Valley. We also found some bones.
On the way back, in the dark, we passed through the Mpala gate near the Ranch House and there was no guard, even though it was just past dusk. We rounded a corner into a ravine and the headlights hit this motorbike lying in the left side of the road, abandoned. It was eerie--everyone in the car went quiet while the car behind us was yelling, what's going on? Robert jumped out of our LC, panicked and shouting in Swahili into his radio. The motorbike is the one that is used by the ascari at the gate (just a 100 m behind us) and Robert had heard on the radio that there were elephants very close by--elephants have been know to closeline cars and bikes on the road. With this in my mind, that lone, overturned motorcycle in the road has become the creepiest and most powerful images in my head and the scariest thing I've seen so far in Africa. We waited on the side of the road, shining our flashlights into the darkness, hoping to locate whoever belonged to the bike.
Julius showed up quickly and insisted that we go back to river camp (we were late for dinner). He said he thought that maybe the elephants had grabbed the bike and dragged it from the guard station but he didn't seem convinced. On his radio, he was asking for a head count of his staff. After we got back to camp, Robert listened on his radio and found out that someone had been on the bike and found himself being chased by an elephant. The man abandoned the bike and ran into the bush, hoping to lose the elephant. He made it to safety. Still, the image of the motorcycle laying in the pool of light made by the headlights haunts me--this fantasyland of wildlife and the animals we've grown up personifying in children's books and movies are not as fun and harmless as we would like to believe.
On the way back to camp, the second car saw a leopard in the dried-up river bed about 200 yards from camp and an ascari said there were lions across the river last night--all this plus the elephant incident made us all much more wary walking around camp.
Nicholas, who hadn't made it to the group ranch as planned, stayed for dinner. At the end of the meal, he stood up and said that he so enjoyed talking with us and staying with us, and he shared with us an old saying--something about "mountains (something) and people meet" and that how because we are kindred spirits, he knows we will meet again--if not in this life, then another. I have no words to describe how powerful that moment was.
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