Biology Reference
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being undertaken in South Africa to try and clean the water, including in the Kruger Park.
On one occasion we came around a bend in a faster flowing, deep but narrow channel in a
gorge where a new dam wall has now been built and a basking hippo charged directly at us
from barely 15 feet away. The boat rose on the bow wave and back of the hippo, and like the
drawings of Livingstone being tossed by a hippo, I expected we too would be tossed. While
we thought our wooden boat that had been built by our parents was quite large, a couple of
years ago I measured it off at it was only 14 feet. Fortunately, either the water was deep
enough for the hippo to get under us or he or she did not mind us in their territory and we
managed to stay in the boat and not get thrown. Closer to our campsite, some three miles away,
there was a pod of some 15 to 20 hippos that traveled inland from the Lomati at night to graze
in the veld near the Hhlabanyati River (incorrectly called in Afrikaans Buffelspruit). One
morning, they were in the water and we unwisely took a couple of shots into the water near
them from a distance. That night we had our usual barbecue (braaivleis, meaning grilling or
burning meat in Dutch) and watched the crocodiles drifting in the moonshine. At night you
really saw how many there were and if you shone a flashlight over the water, multiple eyes lit
up. We sprayed ourselves with mosquito repellant, pulled the boat up on the bank, and crawled
into our tent for the night. Later Grant and I awoke hearing the boat being tossed around by
loud splashing and snorting hippos that then came out of the water and started walking around
the tent, nudging the tent rope stays. It was the closest I've come to doing the proverbial in my
pants. Raymond did not wake up with the commotion but we lay there in fear not knowing what
to expect. I've since heard that hippos consider tents to be solid while grizzly bears seem to
have no consumption in plucking some homo sapiens out of tents for a meal. Raymond's sister
is now married to Lesley L, a prominent wildlife expert and at establishing a restorancy,
including Phinda in Zululand and also now working on lion restoration in India.
One evening years later when we were Xakanaka my son went to the ablution block and I
kept a close eye on him and his flashlight. His flashlight suddenly turned around and came
bouncing back at a rapid speed. As he was walking to the ablution block an elephant foot with
big nails and a trunk holding grass came into his flashlight beam about 15 feet away. He
immediately turned around and ran back. Because of their grey color, elephants can be difficult
to see in a flashlight beam at night, but seeing the trunk with a tuft of grass was all he needed to
see to high tail it back to the cars. Fortunately the elephants were on human territory and are
generally not that aggressive in this area because hunting is not allowed. A YouTube video
shows an elephant walking around a group of campers at Xakanaka and then smelling an apple
that one of the ladies had forgotten in the tent. The elephant promptly then tore open the tent to
get the apple and then ambled off.
My friend Graeme also told a story about how they were sitting at the camp fire at sunset
when 15 lions walked past them and just ignored them. However, according to one of the
rangers at the community game reserve just outside Moremi the Xakanaka pride had on two
occasions been man-eaters. On one occasion someone working at the community game reserve
dormitories had snuck off for an illicit adulterous affair with a woman in another cottage, and
while he was sneaking back early the next morning the lions jumped on him, killed him, and ate
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