The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 44: In the Company of Elephants

    This is the final chapter of the Botswana Journals, and I saved it for last.   This is the impression I want to leave with you.    

  I was thrilled beyond measure when I saw my first sable antelope in Chobe National Park.

    I was moved almost to tears when I saw elephants pausing to pay their respects to one that was dead.

    But this day?   This day will live in my memory forever.

***

    Once out of the riverbed, we begin to see several small elephant herds.   As we continue to drive in this area of the reserve, the number of elephant sightings increases.

    Mashatu Game Reserve bills itself as the Land of Giants, with an estimated 600 to 900 elephants roaming 104,000 acres of private land.   The reserve is not fenced, so the animals can come and go as they please.    Twenty-two giraffes were released into the reserve in 1984 after they had become locally extinct.   At the last game count, more than 700 were spotted.

    The elephants under a Mashatu tree in this video are consuming something small and yellowish.  Perhaps the berry-like fruit or dried fruit. 

    As the morning progresses, it seems that all the little family units have joined with others, and what happens next will touch my soul like nothing else has done.

    I have a lot to say about these videos that I made while in Mashatu Game Reserve in southeastern Botswana, but nowhere in these words will you find an accurate and all-encompassing description of how I felt sitting in an open Toyota Land Cruiser as dozens of wild and free-roaming elephants walked on either side of me.

    I am convinced there are no adequate words that can convey that feeling.   I have a pretty decent vocabulary, as well as a number of books that provide synonyms, antonyms, and rhyming words.

 

    But I can't find a single word to describe what I felt.

     Bellamy waits for his chance to cross to the other side of the mass of elephants.   He parks us a few feet beside their trail, close enough for us, but far enough that the elephants are not impeded.

 

 

    As you watch this last video, you will see an elephant cross directly in front of me and give a little head wag.  I’ve learned from my own experiences, and from talking with guides and camp staff, that this is elephant language for “Watch your manners.   Don’t come any closer.”

    I’ve seen that head wag several times.   One young bull in Chobe National Park threw a complete tantrum, trumpeting and thrashing the bushes, then trying to run after us when our driver spotted an opening and drove us away.

    Another time, I was gently rebuked by a camp staff member at

the Selinda Spillway for trying to get a little closer to an unobstructed view of elephants drinking and bathing in a small stream that ran past camp.   The elephant closest to me wagged its head and tossed its trunk and ears.  

    “You had your warning,” she said, as she urged me to back away.

    Sit back and immerse yourself in the wonder that is elephants.   See if you can feel some of the awe that I felt.

    Note how all the elephants tend to walk on the same path as those leading.   This is quite common.   Hippos, when they come out of the rivers at night to graze, also walk on the same path as before.

This one.   Be sure to watch this in the largest format your device offers.

    Those of us who live in countries where regulations and liability laws try to vouchsafe us from harm can easily forget—in the moment—that these are truly wild animals that don’t live by our rules.

    Back to how I felt: I can only offer my heartfelt gratitude to Marg Wood and Shelly Kurtz of Marshel Adventure Tours for the opportunity to experience this.   It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime gift.

"Got milk?"

    Unlike what you would expect from an enormous animal, elephants do not have hooves.   They have toes and toenails, though the entire sole is covered with tissue.   There are five toes on the front feet, and four on the rear.

X-Ray of an elephant's foot.

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 43: Drama in the Riverbed

    This is our last full day at Mashatu Game Reserve before we head for home, and already the sun is setting.

    I am very sorry this wonderful trip is coming to a conclusion.   I wish I could stay here forever and ever.   Or at least, the foreseeable future.   I'm getting low on memory cards for the cameras, though, and I refuse to download the photos onto my little travel computer or an external drive, and then format the cards I'm using.   That's what everyone else does, but I'm not confident enough in my tech skills and am afraid I will lose all the photos.

    I bring home the cards with all the photos still on them, even though they are also copied to another external drive.   In fact, I still have the original memory cards with photos for every trip I've taken since I became interested in photography.   I sometimes need them to restore catalogues in my photo software.

    Anyway, we drop down into the riverbed.   It's in shade, and that's hard to expose for to get vibrant photos.   Everything looks blah.

    We come across this fellow sound asleep in the shade in the riverbed.

    We aren't going to get anything from him, other than a head raise to see what's there.

    He goes back to sleep, and we drive on.

    We find a leopard, also enjoying a snooze in the cool sand of the riverbed.   She, however, gets up, has a drink of water, and goes on a walk.

Video:   (Cell phones don't record well in the shade.)

    We watch as the leopard walks along the high riverbank.

Just an aside:   I asked Bashi if he had ever seen the river cut full of water.   He said he had, and that sometimes it overflows and floods adjacent land.   As for how fast it flowed, he said, "You would not dare put a boat in it."

    Suddenly, something ahead catches her attention.

    I look upstream and spot another leopard coming this way.

        The two leopards continue to converge.    The anxiety and tension among us are almost palpable.   I'm holding my breath.

    No one says a word.   We are all concentrating on the drama unfolding before us.

        The first leopard turns, and, crouching low and using some fallen branches for cover, moves out of the riverbed.

   

    Once the first leopard is out of sight, our guide moves up closer to the second leopard.   I'm hoping she doesn't catch the scent of the first leopard, but it is almost inevitable that she will.   The two are less than a hundred feet apart when the first leopard disappears.

    Someone, maybe me, asks what would happen if the two leopards meet.  The guide says, "They will fight."   He says the first leopard is the daughter of the second leopard, but that means nothing.   

    Leopards are solitary animals and very territorial, though young females often establish their own territory adjacent to their mother's.

The "blah" of photographing animals in the shade.

    Here, the second leopard enters an area where the late sun penetrates the river bottom.

      She walks right toward us.

    And passes in front of one vehicle.    Our tension is still high, but somewhat abated by the disappearance of the first leopard.    That won't matter if the second leopard comes across the first's tracks.

    To my dismay, the leopard goes up the bank.  Perhaps she has the scent of the first, after all.  

    Our guide hurries to find a trail leading up the riverbank and then searches for either of the two leopards in the riverine forest.   We can't find either of them.

    We compare notes with each other and agree that this event has all the tension of a well-wrought movie scene.   Except, it was real.

    The river bottom before we leave it.

    The sun has almost set, and it's time to head back to camp for our final night at Mashatu Lodge.

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 41: The Lions

 

    I arrive at the appointed place in the lodge where we gather before each game drive.  There is no one there, not even Marg, who is always early, so either I'm the first, or I'm late, and everyone has gone without me.   (How dare they!)

    It turns out that I'm early, and the rest of the group soon shows up.   It's still dark, but we don't need security escorts because Bashi has scouted out the area around our rooms to make sure there aren't any critters about that might cause a problem.

    A nice sunrise appears as we leave camp.

    Down in the riverbed where the lioness with cubs is, we find what I assume is the alpha male of the pride.   He's sound asleep.

    Our arrival interrupts his lion dreams.

    He sniffs the ground....

...and exhibits what is called the Flehman response*.   It is, in effect, a urinalysis of the female's urine that tells the lion many things.   For an explanation with diagrams,  see this link:

 https://www.petmd.com/cat/general-health/cat-sneering-what-flehmen-response

        The lioness and cubs are enjoying the sunrise above the riverbed.

    A three-photo mini-story:

"Momma, are you sleeping?"

 

"Mom!   Wake up!"

 

"I just needed a nuzzle, Mom."

*FYI:   The Flehman response is not limited to lions only. According to AI:

• Equids: Horses, zebras, and donkeys frequently use this to identify the reproductive status of others.
• Felids: Domestic cats, tigers, and lions use it to analyze scents, often after sniffing urine or markings
  .
Ungulates: Goats, sheep, giraffes, giraffes, buffalo, and elk, particularly males, use this during the mating season.
Other Mammals: Elephants, llamas, camels, and tapirs are known to display this behavior. 

  

  A curious note:  Rhinos establish a latrine area  called a midden, which can grow, with repeated usage, to 10 or 12 feet in diameter.  Many rhinos use the same spot, with the middle reserved for the alpha male.   It is the social media center for the rhinos and the scents there provide much the same info as exhibited by the Flehman actions.

    Aren't you glad you read all the way to the end of this chapter?

    With that sweet thought, it's on to the next chapter.   It's about hysterical elephant aunties.

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 40: Leopards, Lions, and Baobabs

     We leave Mashatu Lodge in the Toyota Land Cruiser, and I can tell we're heading to the river beds.  How I know our destination is a mystery, because once again I am thinking about how utterly lost I'd be if I were to be separated from the group.

    Lost.   Utterly.   I would not know what direction to go to try to get back to the lodge.   

A beautiful iridescent skink that lives in the rocks outside my lodge room.

    Follow the road?   Perhaps.   That would get me a little distance, assuming there weren't any lions in the vicinity.  Or snakes.   Or venomous spiders.

    Utterly lost and vulnerable.

    I certainly don't need to fear the little skink that lives at the lodge.

    Since this is a privately owned reserve and entry is restricted to guests only, there aren't many trails, but there are some.  What would I do if I came to an intersecting trail?   Probably cry.  If the lions hadn't found me yet.

    My reverie is interrupted by a couple of impala stags.   I have no idea what they are doing when one raises its head and places its mouth close to the other.  Some kind of male testosterone thing, I guess.

Gossping?

   The river bottoms are my favorite places in the reserve.   Now that the guides know where the lioness and her three young cubs are hanging out, that's the first place we go, stopping for any other sighting along the way.

As usual, the cubs show evidence of playing in the water, as they are wet and sandy.

    We find a kudu and a crocodile.

    And, of course, some birds.   The sandpiper below is a wood sandpiper, a LIFER for me.

    And, one of my favorites, a three-banded plover.   They are tiny little birds with awesome eyes.   In my travels, I have "saved" a baby plover and a plover nest.  The baby was left in the road at Amboseli Park in Kenya when its mother and siblings scattered before an approaching vehicle.   I asked the driver to go back because I knew there was a reason the mother was lying in the road.   Sure enough, there was a hatchling there.

    The nest I found in a gravel pit when I pulled off the Denali highway in Alaska.   I spotted a tiny plover running at my vehicle and stopped.   The bird immediately squatted down.   She was protecting her nest, a nest just out in the open where anyone could drive over it unknowingly.   I built a "guard" around it with the biggest rocks I could carry.

    We circle back to the lions and find them resting in the shade of the river bottom.   

Mom, the jungle gym.

    In the photo below, one cub is nuzzling Mom, one appears to be nursing, and the third is playing with her tail.

    Now that you have it, Little One, what are you going to do with it?

    We come across a sleeping leopard.   She is not annoyed at our presence, but neither is she amused as she changes positions behind a log.

        And then, it's time for sundowners.

The incredible, easily recognized baobab tree with its slim, pear-shaped trunk.

    Toasting the day.

    The plan was to stay out after dark and photograph stars with the baobab in the foreground.   Once there, we realized it would be quite some time before it was dark enough to do that.

    As the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "The best laid plans o' mice and men, gang aft agley."   Lots of wisdom there, Sir Bobbie.