Flight from Cleveland to Washington and on to Johannesburg - A Short Safari Adventure Among Africa's Thorny Bushveld Wildlife - page 84

Docile but Highly Venomous Vine Snake
Mozambique huts and lemon like juice stand, girl with her African dog
Buffaloes and elephants would also migrate out of the Kruger Park in those days when I was
growing up, following ancient migration routes down to the Northern parts of Zululand. Once I
was out with my father traveling on a wet dirt red clay road lined by some 8 - 10 foot tall
elephant grass when we came around a bend to find a herd of buffaloes were blocking the
road. They nonchalantly looked at us and then ambled off at their own time. Although rare, they
will occasionally charge vehicles - often when wounded but that is not always the case. Peter
Capstick in an interview with Wally Johnson related how a rogue buffalo that had killed eight
people charged his vehicle, lifting it partially off the ground. There are a couple of YouTube
videos of buffalo chasing vehicles, and in the movie Hatari the buffalo they are trying to catch
repeatedly hooks and rams the vehicle with its horns. Wally also relates how one of the
Rhodesian boys shot a buffalo with a .22 Hornet behind the ear. One of our friends, who lived
across from the Crocodile River and tried to grow fruit trees including oranges, had their trees
regularly raided by marauding elephants. Another friend had buffalo, lions, and elephants
regularly walking through their backyard that faced onto the Crocodile River. My father helped
them install a water pump for pumping water from the Crocodile River in the Kruger Park but
caught both tick bite fever and malaria from being there. As a very young child I remember