Candice Bergen | 04/04/2009 11:30 am
Candice Bergen's Adventures in the Jungle
In response to: What is the most exotic creature (animal, bird or insect) you have ever seen in its natural environment?
Jeez. I had just been so daunted by Ms. McFadden’s response of sharing a gorilla nest that in my long moment of hesitation, the time has passed. I did, just by the way, have some good animal encounters — baboons rattling my door; crocodile nests; baby gorillas; sitting to pee on an upturned elephant jawbone at night when a lion, unseen, next to me behind a fence, suddenly roared so loud I fell off; hippos charging a canoe from underwater; charging elephants at close range; riding an ostrich and biting the dust; spending the afternoon next to lions sitting beside me, nuzzling my leg.
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Candice,
Your tales of surprise close encounters with a score of African animals only make me re-live my own journeys to Botswana and Namibia. In no other location, do they make you hold your luggage weight to 22 pounds (including duffle) as all travel is by private plane as there are no roads. Only there do you leave your tent at daylight in an open car — no peeking out the roof - and are driven anywhere they want to track animals with no roads at all. This is wild at its best and surprises at their most. On one trip we were with National Geographic photographers only who were there at Mombo to film wild dogs - their home life and hunting their prey. We learned that small but very wild animals still show behavior patterns as humans do, leaving the kids with aunts while they have an early morning run to get food for them. It was like watching a kindergarten group starving for breakfast, and then the tenderness of the parents feeding the babies.
The hippos are in droves in the Okavango Delta, coming on shore at night, and finding the vegetation around our tent to their liking. You could see the tent sides cave in as they rubbed their way along right outside - hearing the noise of hippo skin on canvas and knowing that hippos kill more people than any other animal in Africa… and yet, yet, they look not so much vicious as interesting.
I have stories of a spitting cobra going for my eyes, and seeking out the desert elephant - a distinct breed whose single members wander close to the Atlantic Ocean in Namibia — providing the unforgettable view of an elephant on the beach. More and more … and each time, new levels of excitement that may come day or night, out of the blue.
Isn’t nature wonderful?????