Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [68]
This approach underscores what I call the Inverse Law of Wildlife Viewing: the fewer the number of gawkers, the greater the amount of wildlife you are likely to see and the more satisfying and uncompromised the experience.
In the course of several game drives conducted on board the Chobe Lodge’s Unimog, I’d taken the time to strike up a closer acquaintance with a local Tswana guide named Patrick. Intercepting him on the grounds of the lodge a couple of days later, I inquired if he would be interested in taking the following day off to show me around. Just me. I would pay him for his services as well as for the use of one of the lodge’s jeeps.
“Let me see what I can arrange.” I could tell he was delighted by the offer, and I flatter myself that it was not just because of the extra money but also for a chance to take a break from his daily routine.
Having settled the necessary details with the management, we convened at first light the following morning. In the trees that surrounded the lodge, birds were singing loudly as they reacquainted themselves with the sun. Out front and in the wide, glassy gray river, hippos were snorting challenges like wrestlers working themselves up for a televised tag-team match. I stretched. The sun was barely up, and the air was almost cool. Patrick eyed me speculatively.
“Where do you want to go? What do you want to see?”
I gave him the same answer I give guides everywhere, from Ankara to Alaska. “I want to go everywhere and see everything, but we only have one day. So you choose.”
He smiled, nodded thoughtfully, and pointed to our waiting vehicle.
The jeep had no top and more interestingly, no doors, the better to allow for unobstructed game viewing. After a couple of hours spent paralleling the river and bouncing through dry forest, we eventually turned right and headed down toward the water. Within minutes, you could hardly see the forest for the elephants.
There were elephants everywhere. If you have only seen them in a zoo, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be virtually surrounded by elephants. As Tennyson might have put it, there were elephants to the right of us, elephants to the left of us, elephants in front of us. Yet in all this trunk-waving, dirt-kicking, lash-batting, throat-clearing throng, there was no chaos, no arguing, no confusion. Each herd or matriarch-led group stayed together. Despite what must have been a considerable collective thirst, there was no mad rush for the cool comfort and tipple of the river. One herd would remain at the edge of the forest, patiently cropping at what remained of the badly battered vegetation while waiting its turn at the water. Across an open, bare, gentle downward slope of compacted dirt and sand some eighty yards in extent, the members of another herd were wallowing in the mud, spraying one another with water, wrestling, and conversing as energetically and politely as a gaggle of soccer moms prior to their children’s kickoff.
Off to one side, among the last line of trees and well away from the nearest of the waiting bathers, a single lioness lay on her belly and watched. Watched and waited as though she had all the time in the world.
From the front passenger seat of the open jeep, I stared in awe and amazement. I had seen more anarchy, disorganization, and hostility displayed at municipal swimming pools. I turned to Patrick. As I spoke, I gestured in the direction of the herd that was killing time at the forest’s edge. Its nearest representative was taking a massive leak less than twenty yards from our vehicle.
“Why aren’t those elephants heading down to the river?”
Patrick smiled knowingly.