Daily Archive for January 29th, 2007

Elephants move into grasslands: Video

What was Mandlovu thinking?

Erythrina livingstonei
The elephant moved a long way today, right from the eastern boundary all the way to Chimize. That’s quite something for a little Chipfongwe.

Herd safety
It was nerve wracking driving on those clays all day and on several occasions I nearly went down. I would be driving in what looked like normal grassland and suddenly thick black sticky mud.

In the pastures
(I remember when I was in the army with the Mounted Infantry. One day our whole company, about 60 horses, went for an outride. The area was rolling grasslands. We saw a Steenbok on the far rise. In between it and us was a little valley but it was all grassland. Our commander gave us the order to charge after it. 60 horses at full gallop across the grasslands. It was quite exhilarating, until CRASH! In the bottom of the valley, covered in grass, was a seep and mud. All the horses went down in a mass pile up. Only 4 were left standing. Somehow the horses were all fine but there were riders with broken collar-bones, broken noses, broken arms and many cuts and bruises. A real mess and one laughing Steenbok)
Earlier today Mandlovu seemed to be having a bad day.
A bull was at a pan and she charged in butting him out the way. And then when I approached she charged. It was just a mock charge and she backed off.

Mandlovu charge

Then she did something really strange. She went down on her front legs on top of a little bush trashing it before rolling over on her side. This was obviously some sort of display to threaten me? But it also meant she was in a very vulnerable position which she obviously intended. So what was she telling me? Just telling me to stay away or that she’s not scared of me?

Mandlovu loses it
It really was strange. And then only a minute or so later she ambled on a few meters past me.
They are just like people, we never will be able to understand them fully. (Take note, I didn’t say women)

On eggs?

Chinzwini No.6

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Chinzwini 3A

These drawings must surely have been done at different times. The large kudu is painted with such accuracy, whereas the other figures don’t seem to be. And what are these other animals?

The one is possibly a wildebeest but I can’t make out the others. And strange how the ‘wildebeest’s’ back legs are drawn so finely and the front legs so heavy.
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Tjololo 28th January 2000

The Tjololo Diaries

28th January 2000
Our normal 16 hours a day in the saddle is a rough ride, but yesterdays 20 hours (because of being stranded between flooded rivers) was a bit too much for us. We were exhausted, and combined with all the rain we’d had restricting us to staying on the roads, meant not much filming. Rather no filming. Will be catching up on sleep.


Tjololo and Tjellers both travelled on the roads for short periods and then moved into the bush where we had to leave them.