I remember when I first arrived here in Botswana and went out into the bush to do field work with Pete. Mishell and I both were scared of what might be out there that wants to kill us or eat us... The environment was dry and dead. The ground was mostly dirt and dry grass. You could see all around you, yeah, there was scrub brush everywhere, but your visibility was pretty good. We were still scared.
Now, what I would give for that same environment. Since it is summer and the rainy season. There is grass taller than me. The vegetation is so thick you can't see the ground. All the scrub brush and foliage is thick and lush. You can't see a god damn thing... So now going out into the bush to do field work is more than terrifying.. You can’t see what is on the ground if you are tromping through the grass. You can’t see what is on the other side of the bush. There are plenty of deadly animals that are shorter than the vegetation.... Wow, crazy I tell ya... It is almost rather pointless to monitor the mongoose when they are away from the lodges. You simply can’t see them.
A week ago we participated in the Bi-Annual Water Bird Count. Two vehicles filled with people went to two different points along the Chobe river in the Chobe National Park to count and document the different species and how many of each spotted. I don’t know what was tougher counting or documenting. Especially when I don’t know squat about the native water bird species. I did learn a lot though. It was particularly tough for me at first, I was simply observing the birds and wildlife as others counted and documented, cause there were a ton of hippos and crocs out. I was finally able to see a bunch of crocs in the wild. I still want to see some giant ones up close though. What was amazing, even breath taking when we drove up on to a couple spots where the diversity of wildlife was unbelievable. Within a couple hundred yards, we saw hundreds of impala, too many baboon to count, dozens upon dozens of banded mongoose (a troop we track), several warthog families, a lone buffalo, even a huge ass monitor digging in the dirt. This with several different bird species and I am sure there were some hippo close as well.. All these animals co-existing with one another. We even watched the young baboon playing with the juvenile mongoose. I will never be able to experience that anywhere else on this planet. It turned out to be a really nice day and we saw a few thousand water birds.
The rain has finally made snakes more visible... Last week, we got a call to come remove a snake. The call came from Salomi, the owner of the property, where we stay. Mark and myself went down to the property and met up with Butch and his son Ryan. We walked to where the grounds keepers had spotted the snake and were still there making sure it didn't take off. The freaky thing is that the snake was hiding under a log that is about twenty feet from the front door of our cottage. We pulled the Anchieta's Cobra out uneventfully and were on our way... Damn, I wonder how many times we walked right by that snake and never noticed it. Ha... And I am always so vigilant. About an hour after we captured that snake, the same people called again cause they found another cobra in their outdoor kitchen. We had to tell them to shoot that one, cause everyone was unavailable to come back to collect that one. But, now I have the carcass.... hmmm I wonder what I am gunna do with it... Then a few days after that, at lunch time, Mishell was going back to the lab alone, I was staying behind to do some stuff at our cottage. On her way back to the lab, she stumbled across a huge Snouted Cobra in the middle of the dirt road that we walk along everyday. He was hooded up and not moving apparently, so it was a waiting game to see who moved first. Several minutes went by before the cobra finally got bored and moved along. Mishell was finally able to get moving again and call me to let me know what she saw and for me to keep my eyes open since he might be hiding right along the road where we cannot see him.
And then just a couple days ago, as I was cleaning up in the snake park, I looked in the Puff Adder cage and I saw babies.... I ran and got everyone, so we could watch around 30 babies being born. They are so cute, you wanna hold them. It is amusing to see these little babies crawling around and only minutes old - already pissy. Striking at us, striking at each other, and even striking at the mother. After a couple more days, we are going to gather them all up and release them.
This last weekend, we met up with several friends and went up to the Elephant Valley to have a night time Braii (BBQ). We drove up to the middle of this open valley, where there was a huge field and nothing around us. We started a fire and opened some beer. This place is heaven on earth, so beautiful. As night was upon us, the stars were incredible. Not just a lot of stars, but the sky was almost blurry cause there are soo many stars. We could see the Milky Way and were shown several other constellations. As we were having our braii, a few people would shine a spot light around us to see what was out there, there were elephants all over the place, buffalo and impala too... At one point, Pete and I were standing a little distance away from everyone and the fire. We were chatting and staring up into the sky. All of a sudden, he says, hear that? Barely visible, there was a huge elephant walking past us, maybe 25 feet away. Of course my first instinct was to say “oh shit” and run, but Pete was like slowly... slowly.. I had taken several steps backwards very quickly, out of pure instinct to run. But, then realized everything was okay and walked back to Pete to quietly watch the elephant go by... What a rush.... Just like a few of the locals who were at the braii with us said, “No where else on earth, you can do this...” I believe them with all my heart.
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