Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [67]
When I returned home, my wife took one peep at me and nearly picked up the phone to call the doctor. I looked, I am not ashamed to say, like someone who had contracted every disease the Amazon had to offer, in addition to some colorful decorative flourishes added by a deranged but especially imaginative artist. Think someone struck by the measles and chickenpox at the same time. I itched like a madman for several weeks until the splotches, blotches, and other visible marks of my South American sojourn finally faded away. We all like to lose a little weight now and then, but there are more efficient and less debilitating methods of doing it.
The next time I was preparing to visit rain forest (in this case, Papua New Guinea), I thoroughly researched appropriate clothing. A company named Willis & Geiger that had been making safari gear for almost a hundred years boasted of clothing woven from a custom lightweight cotton twill that breathed well and was tough enough to turn back the jaws of an army ant. I bought a pair of their shorts, a pair of long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt. I have them still. With the exception of having to replace two buttons, they are as sound as the day I first wore them. No thorn has ever pierced the material nor any bug, no matter how determined, penetrated the fabric to reach my skin. Additionally, in this specialized attire, I can walk all day in the rain forest, soak it through with perspiration, hang it up in a hotel room, and wear the same outfit to dinner that night in a nice restaurant without embarrassing myself.
So naturally, the company is now out of business, having been purchased by a much bigger concern that promptly discontinued the special material because, as was explained to me by a company executive, “The market for this sort of specialized apparel is too small.” I wouldn’t trade my set of well-worn Willis & Geiger for the finest suit on Saville Row.
After all, when it comes to repelling bugs with jaws the size of your fingernails and the temperament of a testosterone-crazed ultimate fighter, you’re far better off setting aside the silk and satin.
XI
EATING, YAWNING, AND COITUS INTERRUPTUS
Northern Botswana, October 1993
THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE encounters experienced in a single day can overwhelm a traveler with a multitude of memorable incidents the full effects of which are realized only on later reflection. It’s a matter of timing, planning, and luck. Everything that follows occurred in the same small corner of Botswana, involved the same predator species, and happened over the course of a single fifteen-hour period. Though they followed swiftly one upon another in a blur of blood and teeth and confusion, all are now forever individually etched in my mind. It shows that if you take the time and make the effort to get a little way off the beaten path and away from other travelers, any number of special moments can be had in a short period of time.
I have previously mentioned Chobe National Park. Chobe has perhaps the greatest concentration of elephants in all of Africa. The population varies according to season, the skill of those doing the counting, the weather, and numerous other factors, but at any one time or another the country may be home to as few as 20,000 or as many as 50,000 elephants. Since much of Botswana is desert, a majority of them can often be found hanging out on the banks of the perennial Chobe River.
Viewing elephants at the Chobe can be done from the top of a Unimog, a massive four-wheel drive vehicle capable of ferrying as many as twenty or more chattering tourists at a time over and through nearly any terrain its expansive wheelbase can span. The herds (of elephants, not tourists) can be better viewed from an open jeep in the company of just seven