THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Just a quick post to let locals know that I’ll be giving a talk on December 1st at the Black Earth Library on my animal-behavior focused trips to Africa. I’ll combine the best of my and Jim’s photographs and talk about the adventures of safaris in Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and Rwanda. We’ll talk about radio-collaring “Jones,” the breeding male of an African Wild Dog pack, sitting with gorillas in Rwanda and the impact of the current drought on the people and animals of East Africa. If you’re in the area, I hope you can come!

7 pm, December 1st, 2009

Black Earth Library, 1210 Mills Street, Black Earth, WI 608 767-2563, Ext. 3

If you can make it, come up and say hi.

Here’s my favorite photograph from the trip we took in August, on the Masai Mara.

I’m working on a post about the comparative behavior of wolves, coyotes, African Wild dogs and domestic dogs, but here’s a short digression for the cat lovers.

An adult lioness in the Maasai Mara marks a bush after rising from a nap. You can clearly see the stream of urine in the photo. Aren’t you glad our house cats don’t weigh 260-450 pounds?

A female cheetah marks a tree.

We found this cheetah right after landing in the “Kenyan Serengeti,” the Maasai Mara. After we landed at a tiny airstrip and loaded up in safari vans on our way to our lodging, we ran into a hunting cheetah who was stalking Impala. After a few minutes she made her move, and dashed at the herd. She was too far away for us to take any photographs, but none of us will ever forget watching one Impala leap over five feet high and fifteen feet horizontally over the tall grasses as the cat charged toward the group. The cheetah was not successful, and strolled away (the rolling gait of a cheetah, with their long, absurdly loose bodies, is a beautiful thing to see).

Here she is, scratching the ground after marking (looking almost dog like at that point, if you’ll forgive the comparison).

The downside of seeing her? Cheetahs hunt during the day, unlike most cats, and appear to be affected by tourism. Our van and several others followed her for awhile as she walked across the savannah, and I was relieved when she cut away and disappeared from view. If she hadn’t I would have asked us to leave, it felt like we would have been harassing her if we had continued.

Not far away we came upon 3 males, probably the grown young of our female friend, snoozing as only cats can in the shade under a solitary tree. Overall, the Kenya trip resulted in seeing more cats up close and personal than any of my other trips (lions especially (more photos to come), cheetah, leopard (briefly), servals and some people (not me) even saw an African Wild Cat, the progenitor of our house cats on a night drive in Botswana.

Here’s a lioness greeting one of the pride’s cubs in the golden light of an African morning:

As you know if you’ve been following the blog, 1/2 the folks who went to Kenya continued on to Botswana. We all knew that seeing Wild Dogs wasn’t a guarantee, but we had high hopes because we were going where and when our chances were highest. (And no, in response to one comment, there are no [African] Wild Dogs in the states, we’re talking another species here, see photos below.) We stayed at Chitabe Camp in the Okavango Delta, owned and run by Helene Heldring and David Hamman, and very close to the research station of Tico McNutt, who has been studied AWDs for over twenty years. We knew that he had radio collars on most of the packs in the area, and we knew that it was still denning season, meaning that the adults tended to stay put more than usual. Still, as an experienced naturalist told us “Seeing AWDs is a gift you can never count on.”

Finding the dogs turned out to be the adventure of a life time. First off, 7 of us got split off from the rest, missed our plane and arrived 1 and a half days late. (Actually barely made it, bush plane couldn’t land in the dark and we and our luggage were literally thrown from one plane to the next in Maun with only minutes to spare.) The six of the group that made it on time (Barbara, Barb, Lisa, Jane, Debbie & Pam) spent 4 hours the first afternoon and 14 hours (really) the next day looking for the dogs. One of the pack was radio-collared, but you have to be within 2 km to get a signal, and the dogs had moved from their usual area because of floods earlier in the year. They finally found them late in the afternoon of the 2nd day, about two hours drive from our tent camp.

Re-united, we all (with a few exhausted exceptions) took off at 6:30 the next morning, driving back to the area where the dogs had been seen.  First we drove about an hour and half on what we would call a track and Botswanans call a road. A plane had been circling overhead looking as well, and the pilot found the dogs and radio’ed in coordinates. After approaching the area, we left the sandy rutted track and began driving ‘off road,’ which included driving not through a woods of Mopane trees, but over them. Imagine driving toward a 12 foot tall tree, with 3 or 4 three inch wide trunks, and simply driving into it and over it. Absurdly, the trees pop back up like cartoon figures, and the damage to the area is minimal. Still, the camp and researchers only go off road when they are doing research and have no choice.

Here’s Tico holding up the antenna, looking for a signal from the collared dog:

After about 45 minutes, Tico said “There!” And there they were. First we saw an adult, and then immediately came upon this scene:

The photo is a bit fuzzy,  my apologies.  The light was a bit low, but mostly I was shaking with excitement. The 12-14 pups (we were never totally sure) were seeing a vehicle for the 2nd time only in their life, and they immediately took off after this photo was taken. Unfortunately, the pups had just developed to the point in which they no longer dashed down into the den when they were frightened. That meant that instead of staying still, the pups ran off and the adults had no choice but to run after them. We followed slowly through (and over) the thick, brushy woods, stopping often to avoid scaring the pups, Tico always holding up the antenna to keep our electronic connection with them.

Lucky for us and for Tico, who wanted to radio collar another member of the pack, the pack stopped after about 30-45 minutes, and we were able to stop close by and watch them while Tico prepared to place a radio collar on another individual. (He always tries to keep 2 members of the pack collared, since mortality is high and losing a radio collared pack member means losing the pack.)

We all sat breathless as Tico prepared the tranquilizer and dart gun, and groaned as a group when his first shot was lifted by a puff of wind and landed in the sand. He prepared another, seconds counting down, and this time the dart bounced off the hip of the female he was targeting. More groans all around. However, it might have been a blessing, because he had wanted to collar “Jones,” the breeding male and had decided against him because he didn’t look settled enough to get close to. (I think that was the most fun I had on the entire trip… realizing that I too had concluded that Jones wouldn’t stay still if we drove close: even though he was lying down, he had never turned his head toward us, although we were only 30 feet away. I loved being able to transfer reading a domestic dog to reading an African Wild Dog!)

After the second darting attempt, Jones looked more settled, so we slowly approached him (in our vehicle), Tico raised the dart gun one more time, we again held our breaths and this time the dart flew straight and true, into Jones’ thigh muscle (only safe target). Jones lept up, ran 10 feet away, and then circled around for a few minutes, lying down conveniently in the shade. Tico and driver BeBe then took measurements and collared Jones, and eventually we all were allowed to come down and see Jones close up, pet his stiff fur and look at his two horrendously infected teeth. Ouch.

Here’s Erin getting a once in a lifetime encounter with one of the world’s most endangered species:

And here’s Tico giving Jones the andidote, after about 40 minutes of data collection and collaring:

We stayed with Jones until he was well up and recovering. I asked Tico if there were ever challenges to a dog’s social status if it returned to the pack a bit woozy, but he said he’d never seen a sign of it. He had worried about that very thing his first year of research, and actually removed the dog from the pack for a day to avoid a power shift. Eventually he found that to be unnecessary, and has not seen any problems in all the subsequent years he’s collared dogs.

This post is getting a bit, uh, lengthy, so I’ll postpone talking about comparative AWD/Wolf/Coyote/Dog behavior til later (if you’re interested… or is this getting boring?  let me know, truly!).

Last comments: Someone with the improbable name of Tico McNutt (I mean, really!) can be one of the most inspiring, dedicated, knowledgeable and kind people imaginable. He has three graduate students working with him now, and has spent over twenty years working with the highly endangered wild dogs. I don’t doubt that he is one of the reasons that dogs are holding their own in Botswana now. And Chitabe Camp is without question one of the most amazing places on earth. The tents are gorgeous inside (complete with blow ups of David’s astounding photographs over your comfy bed), baboons play on the roofs of the tents outside, the entire place is brilliantly run and profoundly eco-sensitive. I said this was my last trip to Africa, and it probably is, but if anything pulled me back it would be the AWD research and Chitabe Camp.

Here’s one more photo of the dogs (sorry, I just can’t resist):

Why Grandma, what big ears you have!

Meanwhile, back at the farm: No photos yet, but it is green and lush and cool and I feel like I’ve fallen into an emerald. Lassie and Willie and Sushi are wonderful, two of my ewes are struggling with a still unknown disease, the lambs are thriving and the grass is bountiful. Oh my it is good to be home!

I’m leading another safari in Kenya and Botswana this August. Wanna come? It probably will be my last.

The first time I went to Africa to lead an animal-behavior-focused safari, I cautioned the participants the day we arrived that we weren’t going to see what we usually see on a nature special on television. “What you see on a nature special is the result of hours and hours and hours of long, boring observations, while waiting to capture the excitement and beauty and drama that eventually will be edited down to a series of amazing sequences. We’d be wise to have our expectations be realistic: we’ll see some wonderful animals and some interesting behavior, but it will be far cry from what you see on TV.”

Boy was I wrong. I mean, totally wrong. I mean, totally, completely and utterly wrong. Here’s just a little of what I’ve seen on the past 3 trips I’ve taken to Africa:

~ Lions mating about 15 feet from our vehicle (and  mating, and mating, and mating… about every 20 minutes. (The photo below was between matings when the male lion got up and began courting the female again.)

~ A herd of elephants stumbling across a pride of lions, and ears flapping and trunks trumpeting, chasing the lions out into the savanna.

~ A cheetah and her two adolescent cubs fighting off a flock of vultures from the Grant’s gazelle she had just killed.

~ Thousands and thousands of Wildebeest “gnu gnu gnu-ing” (that’s what they sound like) as they stream across the Maasai Mara (the Kenyan Serengeti) on the largest migration of animals on earth, accompanied by herd after herd of zebra, hundreds and hundreds of gazelles–and the lions, cheetahs, leopards and hyenas that follow them. It takes your breath away (and this next trip is going during the migration, just fyi!)

~ An antelope mom and young cautiously circling a salt lick (a natural one) all night long, while a herd of elephants dug up the salt, and stroked a new born baby with their trunks (they were about 20 feet away from us, we could count the tiny hairs on the babies gray skin). Baby elephants are called Tembo Toto in Swahili, a perfect name for them we all agreed–the cute factor of baby elephants is out of the box. Seeing  them in person simply can’t be described. At dawn, we arose for breakfast, only to watch a leopard leap onto the back of the same antelope mom and subsequently drag her up a tree.

The elephant mother below walked across the river and right in front of our jeep–very common but never boring!

The two adolescent male lions below were part of a nine-member pride that walked out of the grass just before we were about to leave for ‘home.’ I had to take OFF my telephoto lens to get the picture, they were literally right next to our vehicle (which they completely ignore, as if it wasn’t there!).

~ Samburu warriors dancing their “I’m about to prove my manhood and go kill a lion” dance, followed by the “I’m about to be married and go into the hut with my new wife” dance. All I can say is that some of us considered staying a little longer than planned after the last dance…. Here are some young Samburu women watching the dances with us.

~ A Thompson’s gazelle being born, (and knowing that a pride of lions was not far away…)

~ A pack of hyenas squabbling over a kill they had made the night before. We spend several hours parked just a few feet away from them, and eventually were able to identify each as individuals. Imagine how satisfying it was when the next day we say a single hyena and, in unison, exclaimed “It’s Greybelly!!!!!!”

~ Maasai children singing for us in thanks for the school supplies we brought to their school. Try to do this and keep tears from streaming down your face; just try.

~ More gorgeous, colorful, outrageous birds than Dr. Suess could make up and, as importantly as all the above…

~ Some of the kindest, sweetest, dearest people you could ever imagine meeting. I have been consistently treated with tremendous care and kindness by the Africans that I have met. There is a saying that you can leave Africa, but it will never leave you, and I think that is partly because of the people. The sunsets and the animals and the light (golden!) is part of it, but for me, the kindness of the people stays with you the longest.

Here are some Maasai with their cattle, having trekked miles as they do each day, for water. I never saw them use dogs for herding, but the dogs play an essential role at night, barking at the slightest hint of a predator trying to break through the thorn bush ‘fence.’

You’ll have lots of opportunities to meet village dogs… you find them in lots of places, including in a Samburu village where I took this photo:

On every trip, I have taken either my nephew or one of my nieces, and I only have one left! I’m going to New Zealand in 2010 and Scotland and back to Alaska in 2011, so I just don’t know if I’ll get back to Africa again. I love to travel but I love to be home more, and I just don’t like to be gone too much.

I hope that some of you can come, I’ve begun to think of you as a kind of family.  Here’s why you might want to consider it: This animal behavior-focused safari different than most safaris in which you stop when you see an animal, give everyone a chance to take a picture, and then drive on. We’ll be much more patient, and will focus on observing and learning about behavior, rather than just capturing cool snapshots to impress people back home.

We are going to Kenya during the height of the Wildebeest Migration, and staying at places that put us right in the middle of the action.

We’re staying at Fantastic Places. For example, we’re staying four nights in the Kenyan Serengeti, the Maasai Mara, at an amazing tent camp, Tipilikwani Camp.  In Botswana we’re staying in luxurious tent camps, Chitabe Camp and Chitabe Trails which are right beside a research camp where the African Wild Dog Project has been studying African Wild Dogs since the 1980′s.

You’ll be with Expert Guides who know and love the people of Africa as much as the animals.

We got a Price Break! Whoppeee… Africa on sale! The economy hasn’t helped tourism in Africa, so the Kenyan safari is now 10% less than it was previously. This is also the perfect time to go because tourism is down, and that means the parks will be much less crowded. The first time I went to Kenya tourism was also down, and it was like having the park to yourself. (It is possible to have 20 vehicles parked around a pride of lions, all from 5 different groups when it gets busy….Going at a ‘down’ time is a huge advantage.)

We’re going at The Best Time. We’ll be in Kenya at the height of the Wildebeest migration and in Botswana when it’s cool and dry. It is usually horrendously  hot and muggy, and I am a major Border collie when it comes to heat. I am miserable when it’s hot and humid, so we went way out of our way to go at the perfect time with the best weather. It’s also a great time for families… you’ll be home well before it’s time to get ready for school.

It is SAFE. Okay, there is always some risk involved in traveling, but believe me, I wouldn’t go on this trip if I didn’t believe in my heart and soul that it is safe.

You can do both trips, or either one, depending on your time and resources. You can come from anywhere in the world, and meet us in Amsterdam en route, or Nairobi.

If you want to learn more, go to my website to African Safari. There you can read more details about the trip, and download a pdf that describes the entire trip. I should mention that I did take all of the photos here, but that my best ones (pre digital) are all in albums. The potential for photography is astounding, and everyone ends up with covers for National Geographic! Here’s a lion responding to us driving up right beside him. Note the signs of extreme stress…

Hey.. there are ALWAYS a million reasons not to do something (I know, I use them to put off doing my yoga every day!)… but maybe this is the time to JUST DO IT!