I saw her. And that makes five. The Big Five. Elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo and, finally, the leopard. On the way back to camp last night, at 7:30 p.m. Felipe scanned the bush with the spotlight when Charlotte spotted her. Much excitement ensued in our jeep. Then I saw her. Just her hind quarter, spotted and muscular. Her head was down, hidden by the scrubby woodland as she moved beside us, going in the opposite direction. Elandri, our field ranger…
It was about 2007 and my girls had just come home from dance. Theresa was in high school, Catherine, middle school. Cath was running down the stairs after dropping her dance bag in her room. “This is the song of . . . I FORGOT,” Cath sang as if she were a drum. And then again, and again. The phrase was in her head from the class she had just left. Theresa heard her the second or third time she…
We set out on foot at 5:45 a.m. for our morning game monitoring exercise. We were headed into the woods looking for one of the Big 5. On the trek, our guide pointed out a dung beetle rolling a perfectly round ball of elephant dung that he created from a nearby rather large pile. He is pushing the ball, many times his size, across the road, up an incline of sand and into a grassland. A female beetle is hitching…
Not too shabby for the first day. Our small group of volunteers saw four out of the Big Five animals of Africa on our first day during two separate game drives. We started our game drive at 5:30 a.m. Kayla, our ranger, with her encyclopedic mind and charismatic South African accent, drove the Land Rover “jeep” into the brush as the sun was rising. In the distance, a bird sang loud and clear. After repeating the name of the bird…
As I enter the third phase of my life, I am feeling called to act. For many years, I have been talking and writing and reading about things that matter to me — social injustice, endangered animals, aging issues to name a few — with like-minded people. I am blessed with good health, energy and enough life experience to go do something. It’s time to stop yapping. Some time ago, I developed an intrigue with elephants and rhinos. I began…