Animal encounters

I’ve had a few encounters with scary creatures during my time in Africa. Not as close as the panda incident for those familiar with the story. But then pandas are supposed to be cuddly not scary. Although cuddling one will cause it to be scary.

But back to Africa…..

I’ve only seen a few snakes in my time here. Of undefined variety. One was merely basking in the toilets until a hotel gardener whacked it very determinedly on the head and threw it into the bushes to recover from its concussion. Another (long and brown is as close as I can get to describing it) swam past me at Lake Malawi. I didn’t know snakes could swim. It was quite captivating til it got closer. Then I decided I had better move. Quickly. The colleagues with me didn’t know what I was doing. I declined a proper swim.

I have always been a tasty individual. To mosquitoes I mean. And some bites have a tendency to flare up a bit. So I didn’t pay much attention when two bites on my ankle got a bit pussy (too much detail? Sorry!). A week later when I couldn’t walk I got a bit more worried. Gebre, my friend, took my to a nice Ethiopian hospital where they prescribed antibiotics and sent me on my way. Slowly but surely it began to get better. But the scars remain. A few months later, a South African bush expert told me they were in fact spider bites and the reaction had been to their venom. I don’t remember it happening. Maybe the spiders were so small I didn’t notice. But in my imagination they were enormous……

The scariest and perhaps most impressive encounter was with two baboons at Victoria Falls. I had gone for a walk down to the water at the foot of the falls. On the way back up I paused to take a photo and put my bag down temporarily. Before I knew it I was wrestling with a large male baboon for my bag. There was only going to be one winner. I had to let go and wait for him to empty my bag item by item until it found what it wanted…the bag of airline peanuts I had forgotten were in there. That a baboon could smell a handful of nuts, air-wrapped in plastic from 100m away was quite impressive. That it then unzipped each pocket of the bag and took out each item individually until it found the one it wanted was even more so. And that it knew how to open the peanuts and unscrew and drink the bottle of water evidence. Impressive in terms of ability to learn new things. Not in terms of changing natural animal behaviours. Or in terms of frightening the life out of me!

I’m off to Madagascar tomorrow to see the lemurs. Let’s hope they don’t bite….