Yesterday at breakfast, Chewie had to go to clean up some trees that the elephants had pushed into the road. There are 900 km. of road in Thornybush, but Chewie is just responsible for the roads closest to Serondella Lodge. Because he was not going to be there during the meal and Monica was busy with the serving, he asked us to watch out for the monkeys. We were all eating and chatting with each other when one of the "cheeky monkeys" ran up and grabbed a scone from John's plate and ran back to the tree off the deck to eat it. Mike, who is rather quiet, jumped up, puffed out his chest and rushed toward the monkey while waving his arms and growling. It was really quite funny - I wish we had gotten the whole scene on video. It was effective for quite a while, but eventually Dave had to scare him off again. I sat and blogged and watched the waterhole as usual after my shower. Lots of warthogs came for a mud bath, including a baby one. We also saw the baby nyala - very cute!
On our evening game drive, we saw an African Harrier-Hawk, a lilac crested roller, a yellow billed hornbill and a dead vulture. Chewie said that the other vultures will eat him. He was quite ripe so I'm not sure why he was still there. We then saw a very large elephant, who had lost the end of his trunk in a trapper's snare. It didn't seem to change his ability to eat or grab branches however so I guess he learned to adapt to his circumstances. We saw some bats fly over the truck (we also saw some back at the lodge), but Chewie didn't know which species they were as there are so many here. We saw another Wahberg's eagle perched in a tree. I have no idea how, but Conright spotted a Southern tree agama (kind of chameleon) on a tree as we were driving by in the twilight. He has the most amazing eyesight! It was only about inches long. It had a blue head when he first spotted it, but in a very short time, it had changed to the color of the surrounding bark. We saw a jackal, but then we had the most amazing experience. We came upon a pack of African wild dogs (different from the ones we saw the other day). There were 4-5 adults on one side of the track and seven 4 month old puppies on the other. All of the adults except one took off shortly after we arrived to find food. They will bring back food for the pups and the guardian adult and regurgitate for them all. The puppies were amazing. They had a pelt of some animal and they were playing tug-of-war with it - running and jumping and trying to take it away from whichever one had it at the time. Then they would chase after the victor and the game would start all over again. We noticed some of the pups were playing with something that looked like a piece of cloth. Chewie said that one of the guests from another lodge had lost their hot water bottle, which has a cloth cover, the other day and that is what they were playing with! I hope they didn't eat the rubber bottle, but they sure were having a great time playing with the cover! One of the puppies ran under the stopped truck and then came out the other side and started chewing on the tires. He didn't get very far so he wandered off to join his siblings. There were originally 10 puppies, but a lion got 3 of them when they were very young. This was a totally amazing discovery because as hard as it is to see this animal, it is almost impossible to see the puppies. We stayed there quite a while just enjoying their antics. For our next adventure, we spotted a young male leopard, We tracked him through the bush, ducking out of the way of the branches and thorns as we plowed through. At one point, I ducked down to avoid an over head branch and a different one snagged by leg. It was just a small scratch, but it bled like crazy down into my sock. I just rolled up my pant's leg and ignored it as we were having such a great time. At one point the leopard crossed near some impalas and they puffed out their chests and sent up a snorting warning to the rest of the herd. The birds were also chiming in on the warning alarms to help out the impalas. The leopard didn't even stop to look,; he just walked on by as he knew the impalas could run away from him and he didn't look as if he wanted to expend the energy for a chase. Chewie thought this particular leopard was about 3 to 4 years old. By this time it was very close to dark, but we drove to a waterhole to look for hippos. We could see 4 snouts at various times and we could certainly hear them as they came up for air - lots of snorting, but they didn't come out while we were waiting and eventually we had to leave to go back to the lodge. Hippos are herbivores, but they are very territorial so they will attack if you are in "their" territory. They can be very helpful to animals stuck in the mud, but I guess it depends on their mood. By this time it is pitch dark, but again we have to thank Conright and his amazing eyesight - he spotted a bushbaby and just around the corner, he pointed out a Giant eagle owl. Conright shone the spot light on him so that we could see his pink eyelids when he blinked - magnificent! Before dinner, there was a spotted hyena at the waterhole off the deck and then a large spotted Genet showed up. This is a crazy creature that looks like a raccoon on the front of his body and a spotted hyena on the back end. Dave had been talking of finding a push-me-pull-you from Dr. Doolittle and I think this animal is as close as he will come to finding something very odd. Just before dinner, we stood out on the deck and did a little star watching. Mike has an app for his phone and he could find out the names of the various constellations with it. The only one I recognized was Sagitarius (I know that is spelled wrong). We could see Jupiter and the Milky Way quite clearly. Most of the other star groupings were different as we are in the Southern Hemisphere.
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