Bush news

Oct. 9, 2008
Maun, Botswana

Nothing like news from the wild to make your hair stand up. Around town I heard that Fani, a groundsman/mechanic who used to switch on the lodge generator in the morning and walk me to the office when I was on early-morning duty, had a chilling encounter the other day at Savute. He got to the generator room around 5 a.m. and found the door ajar. Oops. It had not been shut tight the night before. Fani walked in and disturbed a guest. A leopard had slipped in to drink the droplets of water behind the generator and had apparently slept there all night. Fani woke him up -- and how! The leopard jumped up, soared over the generator and onto Fani's back, which he used as a springboard to leap out the door. Fani was unhurt, thank goodness. The word is it's a tossup who was more frightened: the leopard or the groundsman.

This happened, I think, the same week the Savute crowd had to wrestle with how to remove a struggling impala that fell into the swimming pool and got stuck. When I tell you it's dry out there this time of year, I mean it.

Even before I left in August, one of the managers looked out the window of her little house (and behind the one where I stayed) to discover a noisy, massive shape nearby. It was a male lion up on his haunches and gulping water from the stone birdbath. We all checked his tracks that morning, and I can assure you they were seriously monstrous in size.