African wildlife adventures live from the bush
Usually the big elephant bulls hang out in ones and two’s, so it was great to find all these big guys together.
Having satisfied their thirst they were in no hurry to move on and as if in slow motion they sidled across the river to the mud wallow. It seems as if the whole world stands still for these guys. They rule! Are they not the “King of Beasts”?
I’m now at the WildTalk Wildlife Film Festival in Durban and was on a panel today discussing…………………WILDCAST!
27th August 2000
Mala Mala rangers had Tjololo sleeping with his kill. That meant Tjololo out of action again all night.
We took the initiative and went on the prowl for action, picking up a pride of 5 lions early on in the evening. They were very much on the move hunting. With several misses after impala and kudu they went in on a herd of impala. There was no stalking or careful approach. Splitting up they ran at the herd causing them to scatter in all directions, confused. The technique worked with one of them catching a young male. The others were soon climbed in. Manners, a thing of the past, they fought for the biggest share of a small prize and within minutes the carcass was split in 5 each feeding aside on their own.
Hunger slightly satisfied they moved on east some distance before resting up for the night. We left them still resting at dawn.
On our way back south we found a cheetah hunting. She was lean, but until we lost her she still hadn’t bumped into any game.
This Spoonbill and Marabou Stork sure looked like they were leading stressful lives and this was causing them to act like totally demented birds. Well of course that was my anthropomorphic interpretation.
But actually they were quite normal and both hunting in the way they’d been taught and that had been handed down to them over the millennia. Presumably this must be the most productive way.
I think the only demented one around is me! Yes I’m still in the big smoke, this time Pietermaritzburg. And running around here looking for an internet café just piled on the dementia. Anyway the good thing is I’m still alive.
26th August 2000
Tjololo was still resting when we found him in the river. Before sunset he was on the move, but trying to remove ourselves from the reeds we fell into a donga, stuck!!! Probably some 10minutes later after much jacking we were out and on the trail of Tjololo. We headed west some distance but didn’t find any further sign of him, retraced our steps and found him sleeping again not even 20m from where we’d been stuck.
After dark he was on the move to his western boundary and then headed north along the Sand river where in the early hours he surprised a pregnant bushbuck doe and treed her before feeding. He seemed to go for the foetus first before feeding on the rest of the carcass.
After he’d had himself a good meal we tucked into ours. The sandwiches were great as usual with homemade bread and a steak filling. Then tea time. Dale has coffee at night. He was the first to be ‘poisoned’. All he had was hot water. Richard tested his, tea bag and no sugar and I then found mine to be the same. All our flasks were undrinkable. We even thought of mixing them all but with no sugar it just wasn’t going work. Solution – send Dale back to camp and start again.
These elephant were at the top end of Malilangwe dam several days ago having this huge party in the mud.
It’s unlikely that they’re doing that today. Down south where I am in South Africa, a really cold front has gripped most of the country and would now have reached Malilangwe too. So no wallowing for a few days.
25th August 2000
We found Tjololo had tried to tree the remains of the kudu carcass but it was still too large and he’d only managed to get it into the lower fork only a meter off the ground. At sunset with him resting up in a tree a hyaena arrived and with little difficulty retrieved the carcass. Tjololo in his sluggish overladen state realised it was time to move on which he did at some 10 steps at a time, resting to catch his breath. He was probably carrying more than half his body weight again in his stomach. Probably a godsend his carcass was stolen, as the possibilities of exploding seemed imminent.
Moving not even half a kilometre he passed out for several hours, but managed to pluck enough courage to walk his stomach east and then south inside the Kruger National Park.
By dawn he was back on Mala Mala resting up at Rocky Crossing.
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