Category Archives: animals

Safari! – or – Better late than never!

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My husband and I went on a safari last fall, and I took, oh, probably a zillion pictures. Maybe more. It turns out to be relatively easy to back up a zillion pictures by date, but really hard to try to make a story out of them.

Elephants! Elephants! Elephants! Every day, elephants. Hundreds of pictures of elephants, but in this safari story, I need only . . . one. Same with giraffes and zebras and . . . So, anyway, that took time, but now I have a small album of maybe thirty or forty of the most varied and salient experiences. And I’ll share many of them here.

First, I have to explain that this safari was on my husband’s bucket list, not mine. Am I glad I went? Yes, absolutely! Would I go again if I had the chance? Well, no. I already have all the pictures of elephants I might possibly need. And yet, who can resist taking more?!

We did do this safari in as luxurious a way as we could. Our camping tents were more luxurious than some of the hotels we’ve stayed in.

Our guides and drivers were also very friendly and helpful–and the vehicles were designed to promote good viewing (and photographs).

The landscape was gorgeous, and filled with animals…

And speaking of animals, here are some that we saw. First, the non-predators (including, of course, the requisite elephants and giraffes):

. . . and, of course the predators:

When people speak (or write) about safaris, there’s one part of the trip you don’t hear much about: the people. And yet, for me, as thrilling as it was to see the animals up close and in their native habitat, the people were, in many ways, the most interesting aspect of the trip.

The Ma’asai are the only tribe allowed to live within the national parks of Tanzania and Kenya because they are the only ones whose lifestyle does not upset the natural balance of the animals in the wild. They are not hunters, nor gatherers, nor farmers. Rather, they herd their own cattle, living peacefully side-by-side with the wild animals. We were lucky enough to visit a Ma’asai village, to observe a dance in which the men prove their manhood by jumping impressively high, and to visit a small elementary school in the village.

We also took an eye-opening walk in downtown central Nairobi, which was at once colorful and full of life, and also distressingly poor.

One of the more surprising things about this safari was that the birds–even the ordinary ones–were quite beautiful.

Resident Pigeon

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Okay, maybe (just maybe) my husband and I watched too many episodes of the TV show “Resident Alien” before we set out on our trip to France, but bear with me here. There are pigeons that walk among us as humans. Somehow, they have managed the art of taking on human form. I don’t think that, like the resident alien Harry, they want to eliminate all humanity. To the contrary, judging from those still recognizable as pigeons, their goal is to devour all the croissants in France. Or perhaps even all the food of every kind.

They may think they’ve mastered the art of appearing human, but we have seen through their disguise. Just look at the feet. As the pigeons grow ready to take on human form, their feet get more and more red.

Those that are very red . . . well, they might just be seated at the table next to you at the café tomorrow morning, ordering croissants.

You can tell which so-called apparent “humans” are actually resident pigeons by looking at their feet. Still red! It’s a clear giveaway.

I don’t think we’re in any danger. There’s plenty of croissants to go around. But if the pigeons ever learn to disguise the color of their feet, who knows what they will do next? Run for president?

Gwenny

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Russian blue cat on a black chair. This is a color photograph, not black-and-white; and it is not a negative.

Gwenny has thick, plush fur of a uniform dark gray color with a shiny silver undercoat that under a direct light highlights her outline (and makes petting her feel like sinking your fingers into butter). Gwenny weighs eight pounds. She is eighteen years old and can still teleport like a kitten when the mood strikes her. Which is not now.

Amber, exposed

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Relaxed, yet alert, Amber wonders why I keep flashing this bright light in his face.

Amber gets a new lion cut

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Amber the Maine coon cat got a new lion cut for the summer yesterday. He looks so serious and regal, all 23 pounds of him.

Gwenny the 8-pound Russian Blue, who has lived with Amber for fourteen years, no longer recognizes him. She hisses when he comes into the same room with her. And if he’s in a room first, she won’t go in.

Surveying Their Respective Kingdoms

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The Buddha’s kingdom is within. And the chipmunk’s…?

Take it from me: The chipmunk and its kin are lords and masters of the entire garden.

Cat in sink

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Amber is a peaches-and-cream Maine coon cat. Like all cats, he takes himself seriously. And characteristically of male Maine coons, he is completely lovable and goofy–in short, hard to take seriously. Here he rests in a sink half his size–which, in case you’re wondering, is 23 pounds (the cat, not the sink)–wondering what I’m doing with that little flashing box.

The coyotes are out tonight

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I live in an urban world. But through an accident of extraordinary good luck our house borders on three hundred acres of conservation land in the middle of the city. And we have coyotes. It is a miracle.

The coyotes are out tonight. There must be at least four of them and maybe six or more. They sound the way the Northern Lights look in the sky–something so large and incongruous your heart stops and you just have to open the windows and pay attention.

God speaks in many tongues.

Views near Golden Grove

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The weekend of November 19-21 was a bittersweet one for us. It was our last weekend on the island. This is always a kind of sad affair, the last several hours of which involve laundering and putting away the sheets and towels, draping the sofas and chairs with old slip covers and drop cloths so that they will not fade, and packing all our clothing, food, and even many of the staples that we don’t want to leave over the winter in the cold, cold house.

But the island gave us many gifts this weekend, as it often does; and so over the next few weeks I will share with you our unexpected visitors, two sunsets, and a moonrise.

On Friday we were visited by two does and their fawns. If they had come any closer to the house, they would have been sitting on our deck chairs, and we would have had to offer them some gin-and-tonics with their grass. These pictures are taken through the (dirty) windows, so the quality is not the best. But the subjects were so photogenic it hardly mattered.

I think these are the two fawns. They arrived separately and seemed really happy to see one another. Friends.

Here’s a cuter shot.

And this picture, with the porch column in the foreground, may give you an idea of how close they came to the house.

Alien Space-Cat from Mars

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What with all the travel, we fell behind in brushing our mostly-Maine-coon cat Amber this spring. The knots wouldn’t come out any more with a brush, and Amber won’t sit still for a scissors. So the only thing left to do was to take him for professional grooming. And so, day before yesterday, poor unhappy Amber was transported to our nearby local “Pet Resort and Spa” for a lion cut.

Well, I did tell them to use the unscented shampoo. Really.

But whether it’s his new ‘do or his fresh, clean smell, Gwenny doesn’t recognize Amber any more. Gwenny is a Russian Blue less than half Amber’s size. “Who let this alien creature into the house?” she growls. “Get him out! Go away! Back to wherever he came from! This is *my* territory! Mine!”

She won’t let him in the same room with her. When the yowling gets too intolerable, I have to separate them.

Amber seems to find this confusing. He’s learned over the last thirteen years not to be afraid of Gwenny, and it’s probably been almost a decade since she acted this hostile. “Who, me?” he wonders. “Wazzup with this?”