Tag Archive for 'rain'

The dogs had another good day of hunting, but still not helping me in my quest to capture any little part of the hunt.
They’re still hunting in the north west where the Grewia thickets really are thickets. It only takes them to run 30m and they’re out of sight. In that thick stuff I just can’t keep up. So I end up following Jiggy’s signal, and so it’s not surprising I find Jiggy on kills more often that I find the other dogs. But then too he IS a great hunter. Especially if one thinks that for at least a week he had to provide for Puzzles when she first gave birth to these pups and was den bound for a week or more.

Today Jiggy took me on a long one and I wasn’t sure what I was following. Was it just him or the whole pack or who. I must have been keeping pretty good pace with him as I found him on his impala kill, a young female, and he was still feeding. Usually Jiggy feeds quickly, less than 5minutes, and is off to call the pack.

He fed a few minutes before leaving me to look after his kill. Not the case really. But I often feel responsible for his kill if some kleptoparasite should come along wanting to take over his hard won prize. Of course I can’t do anything, but then I think Jiggy loses faith in me probably thinking I took his kill. Hopefully the other animal’s scent in the area tells him the true story.

Jiggy was back about half an hour later with the pack and in their feeding frenzy the kill was all but gone in about 5mins. The pack lay around chewing and sucking whatever bones were too big to crush.
Puzzles took them to a pan to rest up for the day.
Some of the mopanie trees in the area were totally denuded of leaves. A sure sign the worms are out. Mopanie worms are large spiky caterpillars that infect Mopanie in some areas in their millions and are a favourite food for tribal people in Africa. They’re eaten raw, dried or even fried and in some cases are even tinned they are so plentiful. On the road sides at this time of year you will people selling them dried by the bucket load.

Jiggy was probably the most well fed of the pack, and wasn’t keen to move on this afternoon when Puzzles took them hunting. And soon they’d shaken him off. Of course he was the only one I could follow, even though I lost sight of him most of the time, but caught up to him just when he found the rest of the pack on another impala kill. He didn’t even bother to scrounge around for scraps.

That was all yesterday, and today it’s been raining all day. Yes I’ve been stuck in the office all day. I should survive, but hope I don’t have to do this for too many days. The sad thing is the forecast is rain for a couple more days.