The Birth of a (very small) Hippo

I have just been watching some incredible video footage by my friend Karen Paolillo of the Turgwe Hippo Trust. The video shows the antics of a very newborn hippo and its mother – video footage that has probably not been seen before, I never have.

Karen single-handedly saved a pod of hippo during the 1992 drought in Zimbabwe, and since then she has become a bit of a 'hippo whisperer'. My first experiences of Africa was with Karen when I went to stay with her for five days, my first five days in the African bush. I was very naive, but those five days taught me a lot about Africa, the wildlife and how to survive in the African bush. Karen's house is very rustic, is in the middle of nowhere and wildlife has the right of way. There were warthogs near the back door, monkeys sitting on the roof, Mozambique spitting cobras in a number of places around the house and kudu browsing on the nearby trees. It was like being in a ground-based Noah's Ark. I learnt how to track animals in the bush, how to watch hippos from a safe distance and how to avoid a charging elephant. It was stuff that dreams are made of.

The melodious sounds of honking hippos to me is the essence of Africa.

Cockroaches - Cunning or Critter?

This last weekend I was enjoying the sun in Chris and Amanda Cowley's (of RedPR) back garden, and the subject of cockroaches came up. I know that this is not a normal conversation over tea, but our conversation wasn't normal anyway. It was geared around Africa and other exotic destinations. Chris had mentioned that whilst he was overseas, a cockroach had crawled over his face, and he had waited in James Bond style whilst this cockroach moved on before he could take his shoe to the little critter.

I feel as if I am quite well versed on the subject of cockroaches and happily recalled the time that I had spent many a night squashing cockroaches in a seedy youth hostel bathroom in King's Cross, Sydney. Little did I know at the time, that if the cockroach is female, the eggs are jettisoned and can hatch at a later date. In order to prevent a massive infestation the best thing to do is to cover the whole place with bleach to prevent cockroach world domination. I didn't know this at the time, and we narrowly escaped a cockroach coup.

I do feel a bit of an expert on cockroaches, partly because I've spent a lot of my life in areas where there are vast populations of the critters and partly because I have spent many an hour reading up about them. I have to say, for my defence, that the reading up about them was because I had nothing else to read. Whilst I was living in Vanuatu I found a bookshop which had three English books in its, the rest were all in French. I am a bit of a bookworm and was delighted to find an alternative to the books that I'd been rereading. These were "The Three Musketeers", "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Laboratory Experiments on Cockroaches".

The book on experiments on cockroaches proved to be quite fascinating, as well as rather macabre. For instance, did you know that you can freeze a cockroach in a tub of water, defrost it, and it will carry on as if nothing has ever happened to it? Cockroaches can also survive a vacuum (for a very short space of time), will continue to move for a number of days once decapitated, can survive high voltage electrocution and are one of the few animals on earth that could survive a nuclear holocaust. Now that certainly has to show something cunning about these creepy crawlies.

I personally do not like them, they resemble something out of the Alien films, but you do have to give them their due. They have managed to survive in a number environments and I suspect there is a master plan to conquer the world.

They are nasty little critters, in my mind, but I am sure they have a 'cunning plan'. Beware.

A Roan Licked my Mirror

Whilst out in Swaziland I was in Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, enjoying the peace and tranquility of the reserve.  There is something about Mlilwane that makes me feel as if I have come home, it is a wonderful place where you can get away from everybody and take time out for yourself.

I was driving around the park with my friends Terry and Vicky, looking at the animals that were housed in the endangered breeding area.  Ted Reilly, who set up Mlilwane after recognised the demise of Swazilands' wildlife, is trying to re-introduce species that were once roaming wild in Swaziland.  We had already seen red duiker hopping amongst the undergrowth, watched sedentary eland and heard the booming calls of the blue crane.  But the most remembered sighting was of a roan antelope.

"Stop, stop, I'd like to take a photo", said Terry and I pulled the car over to watch the approaching roan.

Terry had his camera on zoom trying to focus on this particular animal, and it obliged by walking closer to us. And closer, and closer until the roan completely filled his view finder.  Terry took his camera away from his face only to realise that the roan was eye-balling him, only 1m away!  This did not stop the brazen animal, it leaned towards the open window and stuck its head right into the car and began to nibble on the mirror adjuster knob! I was speechless, until I realised that its horns could get caught inside the car. This could not only get messy but the rental car company would not be happy, let alone my bank balance.

With some verbal persuasion, the roan removed its head from our small mazda, licked the wing mirror as a passing shot and nonchalantly walked off to graze on more wholesome grass.

Terry never really got his award winning picture, he was too busy laughing.

Expect the unexpected in Africa!