Dinosauric!

I think, apart from the “Big Five” (Rhino, Elephant, Cape buffalo, Leopard, and Lion) of Africa, one of the most impressive animals on that continent is the crocodile. Phrases that come to mind when I think about crocs (the reptile, not the shoes) are: prehistorically efficient, iconically reptilian, realistically dinosauric… not sure if that last one was even a word. Oh well. It’s a word now, and it fits doesn’t it? I mean crocodiles ARE so dinosauric, aren’t they? I can think of no better word to describe their aura of calm, scaly, cold, crafty, oldness. Ain’t they cool?

 

Crocs, they know they're cool. 

All of the croc pics in this post were taken by Clive, an employee at the park with a really sweet camera and a new friend of ours as of this year.

Apparently crocs were high on a lot of people’s bucket lists, because when we let the word out that we were taking a drive to the river to try and see some, everyone wanted to come! We ended up borrowing the science center’s game drive vehicle, which could probably seat up to 15. The more the merrier, right? I think so, especially with an awesome group like this!

 

 

Fun fact: in the game drive vehicles, the person or persons on the very back seat have the biggest gamble in trusting the driver’s ability to get them “There and Back Again,” because both the vehicle’s shocks and the park’s roads are bad.

 

And one big bump with a driver who’s more Hyde than Jekyll could find you, poor, unprepared backseat sitter, in a much closer experience with the animals than you signed up for (i.e. the truck will go up with the bump, and so will you, then the truck will come down to the road, and so will you… behind the truck… on the road… with a bump… in a slump…) I’ve been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss lately. Can you tell? Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because someone “CoughRyanCough!” almost sent Frederick, a grad student visiting the park from Sweden, flying.

Unfortunately, other than that lil’ anecdote there’s really not much of a story to this event. We trundled out there, saw some awesome crocodiles, and trundled back with cool pictures, which I will now share with you. Enjoy!

I feel charming! Oh, so charming! It's alarming how charming I feel!

(I dare you to click the link and then try and get that song out of your head.) 

 The river's not that wide, and hypothetically speaking, if I got a running start...

D'ya think he'll try a running start?

I love it when they do that. Meals on wheels, baby.

Eyebrows can also be used as great handholds for shoulder-riders.

He's gonna try a running start. Pass it along.
Hubert, get yer tail outta my face!

 Oh, and that lil' bird right in front there? He's about the same size as our blue heron. That guy behind him is a Goliath heron. Wikipedia gave me some stats to share: This is the world's largest heron. The height is 120–152 cm (47–60 in), the wingspan is 185–230 cm (73–91 in)

He's big, people, but not as big as the surprise we saw on the drive back to the lab!

These guys totally surprised us... and not in a bad way, thankfully. They were so quiet we almost drove right by them. Not sure who noticed them, but I'm glad they did, and I'm glad the elephants didn't mind us doing the tourist thing for a few minutes. Seeing these massive creatures out in the wild will never get old for me. What a great end to a fun trip!

How to make a Craft Project look like a Murder Scene...

So, I was planning on being all efficient and everything during the two weeks I’m currently spending at my parents’ house. I was going to finish off the African blog posts on time/almost on time and get home with a full blog and an empty To Do list.

Then, when it was far too late to do anything about it, I realized a couple things…

1) Ryan has ALL the Africa pictures on his computer.

2) Ryan’s computer is in Idaho, with Ryan.

3) Ryan will not remember or have time to email me all the pictures I need, ‘cause the semester just started and he's already crazybusy. (Even though I did ask, people. So you can all blame him for the out of sync post that follows.)

But it’s not the end of the world. I mean who says that these blog posts have to be ordered in a perfect, linear timeline? I can skip around, can’t I? Granted, it would have been NICE to have everything in order, and reading a steady progression of events is so much EASIER than reading posts that hop around the calendar. But I don’t complain. Do you hear me complaining? I DON’T COMPLAIN!

Well, that wasn't awkward at all...

 

Here we are, in my parents’ town, readjusting to life in the states (driving on the right side of the road, saying "poo-poo" to the mosquitoes instead of "away, foul malaria-infested demon bug!" That kind of stuff.) and having a grand old time strolling around downtown Loveland, CO with the fam. Lots of artsy, bohemian style shops, and lots of good restaurants are to be found there! I  have had the best Pho at least three times in the last few weeks.

Had to make up for lost time, didn't I? Been craving this stuff for over three months now.

 

And I suppose before I get to far into this post I should probably explain the title, huh?

Well, Mimi and Pops let the grandkids help them paint inside the garage, which was a fun experience for all.

Caden has a turn...

Paddy has a turn...

and Joey has a belly! Oh my gosh, you guys! Come look at this belly!

Clean up! Start 'em young so they can get a jumpstart in the job market.

Touch ups. Caden went at it with a will.

Afterwards, they (the grandparents) wanted to have the handprints of all three grandsons up on the wall. It’s a really sweet idea, and when done right, could become a very special personal touch in Pops’ garage … but… well… when you’re remodeling the house and the only other paint you have is a dark red—which will look great on the front door, I’m sure—you kind of realize that color and design and placement can be, in fact, very important in the creation of child-related craft projects.

Ahem.

It's not what it looks like. I think we all agreed that when it's redone we're gonna go with happier pastel colors. You know, something that doesn't scream Redrum?

Elephants and Sable and Caden, oh my!

As much as I love this place, every now and again I start to get a little bit of camp fever, which is very much like cabin fever. It means I’ve been in the routine too long, and I need to get outside the fence and experience a little bit of the real Africa, see some of the real reasons we’re here. So, one day recently when Ryan had some time off, he took me and Caden out on a game drive.

Now, I can understand that it seems kind of silly to say I need to see some real Africa. I mean, it’s not like life inside the camp is “fake” Africa after all. It’s true that camp life is camp life pretty much wherever you go, but how many camps back home have a whole group of these wandering around thirty feet from the fence line?

But still, being in a remote location and doing the same thing every day—feeding Caden, playing with Caden, disciplining Caden—can (shockingly) get a little monotonous. 

I am so glad we went on this drive. If we had wanted specifically to find elephants, we could not have picked a better day or time to try. Actually we didn’t have to try at all. Two separate herds just showed up as we drove along. The first group was crossing the road ahead of us after we’d barely driven two minutes outside of the gate. They were very calm and allowed us to stop the truck and take some really cool pictures!

These guys were less than 25 yards from us. The next group was not so calm. The older females were shaking their tuskless heads at us, which was their way of saying, “we don’t like this and we don’t like you.” They were about 50 yards from us when we drove by, and we didn’t stop to push our luck.

Many of these old females experienced the civil war that ended back in 1992, or at least the part of it that spilled over into the national park, and as a general rule they don’t like humans very much. They didn’t care if we got some long-distance pics though, which we really wanted to do because their herd was so big! There were even babies! I have to say, baby elephants are the cutest little (“little” Ha!) wrinkle-fests I’ve ever seen. 

The rest of the drive was not so eventful, but we still had a lot of fun. We drove through the yellow fever tree forest. I think fever trees are my favorite kind of tree over here.

The bark is green and yellow, graded like a topography map, and all dusty and shiny like butterfly wings in the sunlight. Interesting fact about fever trees: they photosynthesize through their bark as well as their leaves.

 

 

Really bad lighting, but I wanted to share a few pics of this huge old baobab tree, and the very active beehive growing out of it.

 

My favorite picture of the day. Morbid or artistic? You decide.

Waterbucks on the floodplains. Caden calls them waterbutts, maybe 'cause the "k" sound is hard for him to pronounce, maybe because they have a big white target on their backsides, either way it's fitting and cute. We saw too many to count, but he would say we saw five, since that's his favorite number.

At the floodplains I was reminded once again just how massive this park really is. I'm not sure if you can see it in these pictures, but beneath the clouds and on the edge of the horizon is the base of Mt. Gorongosa. That mountain is the border of the park lands. It is partially within and partially without the edge of the park, and it is universally difficult to get on right now because of Renamo soldiers. They aren't totally thrilled with the peace agreement that was signed last year, and are currently hanging out on the Mountain, and causing stress for anyone with business on the mountain, whether it be legal business or otherwise. Good times.

Another amazing adventure that happened recently was that we got to go with Ryan on two of his captures. These ones were both a little unique though, as neither of them was related to Ryan’s project. Both captures involved darting sable from the ground. You might remember sable from Ryan’s last post, because he included a short video of himself darting another sable from the helicopter. Just a quick reminder though, sable are a gorgeous, almost horse-like antelope, and both the males and females have horns. 

In the first of our family sable adventures, Ryan was darting another female sable because he and Louis needed to remove an old wire snare that had become wrapped around one of her ankles.

This sable was a member of the herd that likes to hang out on the airstrip, which makes them easier to see, but harder to sneak up on. Plus, the helicopter was no longer around. We took a game drive vehicle, because the animals are more used to those vehicles than they are to the science trucks, and so there was plenty of room for Caden and me to come along. We basically stalked them in plain sight. First Frazer (one of the amazing guides that works in the park here) drove near to the herd in one direction, then he cut the engine and we waited a few minutes, then he turned the vehicle slightly and drove a little closer, then he cut the engine again, and so on until finally we were close enough for Ryan to dart the poor girl. The herd was pretty nervous, and they were all on their feet and slowly moving away from us, but Frazer still managed to get us just where we needed to be. The shot was good, and after about 10 minutes of crazy off-road driving we found her lying in the tall grass. I’ll tell you what, seeing the damage that a wire snare can do to a beautiful animal like this is sickening. The cable was deeply embedded in her hugely swollen ankle, which explained the bad limp we’d been seeing. After removing the snare, Louis treated the wound with a variety of antibiotics and protective salves, during which time we were able to get some cool pictures with her.

It was so amazing to be able to share in an experience like this! And the good news is that after about a week, Ryan and Louis spotted her with the herd again, and they could hardly even tell it was her. The swelling was gone and limp was barely even noticeable. Well done guys!

Our second sable adventure came when that same herd showed up back on the airstrip again a few days later. Ryan still had one collar left to deploy for the graduate student in South Africa, and he’d been asked to put it on a mature female in that particular herd if possible. So away we went in the game drive vehicle again, this time with Paul driving! Paul is another guide here who is working as sort of an intern to Frazer. Things played out similarly to the first time, except that the herd seemed to know what we were up to, and they were even more nervous. Ryan had to dart this one as she walked away at about 35 yards, which is the limit of his range with a transmitter dart. The dart went where it was supposed to though, and a few minutes later we were once again standing with a beautiful, sleeping female sable. 

Caden absolutely loved these experiences, which was priceless for us. Last year, when he was only 2, Ryan brought us out with him once to dart a bushbuck. Caden just wasn’t old enough to understand much of what was going on at that time, and so he didn’t really take that much of an interest. Not so this year! He was tuned in to every aspect of the sable darting experience, and he absolutely loved getting to see them up close and touch them. Not to mention that he’s spent a lot of his daily play time every day since “booming” animals with a toy dart gun (a stick) just like daddy. Instead of making a boom when he shoots though, he now mimics the “whoosing” sound that the real dart gun makes when daddy uses it. He did that for the first time completely spontaneously just a few seconds after Ryan darted the first sable, and it was adorable! I think he’s starting to realize for the first time that his daddy has a pretty cool job… :-)