Elephants and Sable and Caden, oh my!

As much as I love this place, every now and again I start to get a little bit of camp fever, which is very much like cabin fever. It means I’ve been in the routine too long, and I need to get outside the fence and experience a little bit of the real Africa, see some of the real reasons we’re here. So, one day recently when Ryan had some time off, he took me and Caden out on a game drive.

Now, I can understand that it seems kind of silly to say I need to see some real Africa. I mean, it’s not like life inside the camp is “fake” Africa after all. It’s true that camp life is camp life pretty much wherever you go, but how many camps back home have a whole group of these wandering around thirty feet from the fence line?

But still, being in a remote location and doing the same thing every day—feeding Caden, playing with Caden, disciplining Caden—can (shockingly) get a little monotonous. 

I am so glad we went on this drive. If we had wanted specifically to find elephants, we could not have picked a better day or time to try. Actually we didn’t have to try at all. Two separate herds just showed up as we drove along. The first group was crossing the road ahead of us after we’d barely driven two minutes outside of the gate. They were very calm and allowed us to stop the truck and take some really cool pictures!

These guys were less than 25 yards from us. The next group was not so calm. The older females were shaking their tuskless heads at us, which was their way of saying, “we don’t like this and we don’t like you.” They were about 50 yards from us when we drove by, and we didn’t stop to push our luck.

Many of these old females experienced the civil war that ended back in 1992, or at least the part of it that spilled over into the national park, and as a general rule they don’t like humans very much. They didn’t care if we got some long-distance pics though, which we really wanted to do because their herd was so big! There were even babies! I have to say, baby elephants are the cutest little (“little” Ha!) wrinkle-fests I’ve ever seen. 

The rest of the drive was not so eventful, but we still had a lot of fun. We drove through the yellow fever tree forest. I think fever trees are my favorite kind of tree over here.

The bark is green and yellow, graded like a topography map, and all dusty and shiny like butterfly wings in the sunlight. Interesting fact about fever trees: they photosynthesize through their bark as well as their leaves.

 

 

Really bad lighting, but I wanted to share a few pics of this huge old baobab tree, and the very active beehive growing out of it.

 

My favorite picture of the day. Morbid or artistic? You decide.

Waterbucks on the floodplains. Caden calls them waterbutts, maybe 'cause the "k" sound is hard for him to pronounce, maybe because they have a big white target on their backsides, either way it's fitting and cute. We saw too many to count, but he would say we saw five, since that's his favorite number.

At the floodplains I was reminded once again just how massive this park really is. I'm not sure if you can see it in these pictures, but beneath the clouds and on the edge of the horizon is the base of Mt. Gorongosa. That mountain is the border of the park lands. It is partially within and partially without the edge of the park, and it is universally difficult to get on right now because of Renamo soldiers. They aren't totally thrilled with the peace agreement that was signed last year, and are currently hanging out on the Mountain, and causing stress for anyone with business on the mountain, whether it be legal business or otherwise. Good times.

Another amazing adventure that happened recently was that we got to go with Ryan on two of his captures. These ones were both a little unique though, as neither of them was related to Ryan’s project. Both captures involved darting sable from the ground. You might remember sable from Ryan’s last post, because he included a short video of himself darting another sable from the helicopter. Just a quick reminder though, sable are a gorgeous, almost horse-like antelope, and both the males and females have horns. 

In the first of our family sable adventures, Ryan was darting another female sable because he and Louis needed to remove an old wire snare that had become wrapped around one of her ankles.

This sable was a member of the herd that likes to hang out on the airstrip, which makes them easier to see, but harder to sneak up on. Plus, the helicopter was no longer around. We took a game drive vehicle, because the animals are more used to those vehicles than they are to the science trucks, and so there was plenty of room for Caden and me to come along. We basically stalked them in plain sight. First Frazer (one of the amazing guides that works in the park here) drove near to the herd in one direction, then he cut the engine and we waited a few minutes, then he turned the vehicle slightly and drove a little closer, then he cut the engine again, and so on until finally we were close enough for Ryan to dart the poor girl. The herd was pretty nervous, and they were all on their feet and slowly moving away from us, but Frazer still managed to get us just where we needed to be. The shot was good, and after about 10 minutes of crazy off-road driving we found her lying in the tall grass. I’ll tell you what, seeing the damage that a wire snare can do to a beautiful animal like this is sickening. The cable was deeply embedded in her hugely swollen ankle, which explained the bad limp we’d been seeing. After removing the snare, Louis treated the wound with a variety of antibiotics and protective salves, during which time we were able to get some cool pictures with her.

It was so amazing to be able to share in an experience like this! And the good news is that after about a week, Ryan and Louis spotted her with the herd again, and they could hardly even tell it was her. The swelling was gone and limp was barely even noticeable. Well done guys!

Our second sable adventure came when that same herd showed up back on the airstrip again a few days later. Ryan still had one collar left to deploy for the graduate student in South Africa, and he’d been asked to put it on a mature female in that particular herd if possible. So away we went in the game drive vehicle again, this time with Paul driving! Paul is another guide here who is working as sort of an intern to Frazer. Things played out similarly to the first time, except that the herd seemed to know what we were up to, and they were even more nervous. Ryan had to dart this one as she walked away at about 35 yards, which is the limit of his range with a transmitter dart. The dart went where it was supposed to though, and a few minutes later we were once again standing with a beautiful, sleeping female sable. 

Caden absolutely loved these experiences, which was priceless for us. Last year, when he was only 2, Ryan brought us out with him once to dart a bushbuck. Caden just wasn’t old enough to understand much of what was going on at that time, and so he didn’t really take that much of an interest. Not so this year! He was tuned in to every aspect of the sable darting experience, and he absolutely loved getting to see them up close and touch them. Not to mention that he’s spent a lot of his daily play time every day since “booming” animals with a toy dart gun (a stick) just like daddy. Instead of making a boom when he shoots though, he now mimics the “whoosing” sound that the real dart gun makes when daddy uses it. He did that for the first time completely spontaneously just a few seconds after Ryan darted the first sable, and it was adorable! I think he’s starting to realize for the first time that his daddy has a pretty cool job… :-)