The 2020 Africa Journals

Chapter Eight:

Trouble with a capital T, 
but BOY! He's cute!

                                                      

The really good photographers I know are gifted with an artistic foresight  that enables them to imagine and plan the photo they want long before they push the shutter button on their cameras.   Thus, it was no surprise when I saw my friend Marg Wood crouching in the dirt, camera in hand, and ready for an animal with a fearsome reputation to burst forth from the darkness into the light.

Good idea, I thought, picturing the black and gray critter emerging from a black background, white teeth and dark eyes catching the sunlight.  

I look around for a spot to kneel down where I could be at the same level as the animal.   I see Marg still hunkered down in the dirt, Mary has fallen off the edge of the rubber tire she was sitting on and is now trapped deep in its well, and Janine has a whirling dervish wrapped around her ankles.

I decide upright is a good place to be.

That critter with the white teeth and long claws is a honey badger, one of the least seen and most frightening animals on earth.  This one, however, is a rescued orphan that is being hand-raised at a near-by rescue and educational facility.   Just a few weeks old when it was found, it was called by a feminine name until its advancing age and forming male genitalia convinced its caretakers to substitute a male name.   And Badgey it became.

Badgey is now a juvenile, or “juvenile delinquent” as Marg calls him.   He’s black with a gray mantle down his back.  Because he knows only humans, and humans that play with him, he hasn’t developed the anti-social tendencies of his breed, but his play is getting rougher and he is starting to mark his territory with a tell-tale musk.

In general, honey badgers aren’t badgers at all, but are more closely related to weasels and polecats.  Though they resemble wolverines, they aren’t closely related to them either.  About a foot high and up to 30 inches long plus the tail, the males weigh about 35 lbs.

They are fearless and rated by the Guinness Book of Records and the bravest animal on earth.   They chase away lions, Cape buffalo, cattle, and horses if those huge animals intrude on their territory.   Their loose hides enable them to twist out of another animal’s bite.

Janine, who is married to Pangolin owner/operator Guts, is one of Badgey’s foster moms.   She visits him often and plays with him.   I found it fascinating that Badgey obeyed her when she summoned him to his enclosed cage.  Then, she opened the door and Badgey shot out into his walled outdoor area, which is why Marg was crouching where she could capture the shot.

Badgey spots Mary on the rubber tire and tries to climb into her lap.  Mary is a good sport about it, but Badgey plays rough.  Plus, he runs over to his small water pool, walks in it, then runs back through the dirt and climbs on Mary.

Badgey also loves Marg’s semi-open sandals, much to Marg’s dismay.   Those sharp little teeth can reach her skin through the openings.  In trying to shoo him away, Badgey accidentally leaves his dental autograph on Marg’s forearm.

Marg's honey badger souvenier.

For the rest of the trip, we wow people by telling them about—and showing them—Marg’s honey badger bite.

Poor baby.

 

Badgey and Marg's sandals.

 

Badgey also left his autograph on the back of Mary's shirt. 

 

A hard rain begins to fall before we leave the animal compound.   We are drenched by the time we get outside to the car and head back to the lodge.

 

Trying to protect the cameras.

Some other denizens of the animal center.

Marabou stork

Marabou stork

 

Marabou stork

Caera shy Marabou storks?   No, just dissipating heat.

A bushbaby.   Now that's cute!

Bushbaby

 

Mongoose

The Africa Journals, Ch. 28, Piglets in the Mist

The Africa Journals

 Chapter 28

Piglets in the Mist

The warthog is a hindgut digester, meaning most of its digestion occurs in the intestines and cecum.  Because it grazes close to the ground, it sometimes ingests foreign objects like pebbles and stones and flints.  When the warthog defecates, the stones can strike the flints and ignite methane gas in the dung, which then burns the hair off the warthog’s tail.   That is why the warthog has only a tuft of hair on its tail and why it runs with its tail sticking straight up.—Brian the Tour Guide   (Really.)

Suckered us in, he did, with that tail tale.  

A soft rainy mist enfolds Chobe Safari Lodge as I sit on my balcony this afternoon.  Below me on the green lawn, four warthog piglets scuffle and play as their mother grazes on the short grass.   Warthogs will never win any beauty contests, hence their prominent place on the list of Africa’s Ugly Five, where it joins the wildebeest (gnu), vulture, Maribou stork, and hyena. 

But the warthog, a member of the pig family, is indeed a hindgut digester and there is little hair on its body, just bristles here and there and a mane on its back.   And there is that tuft on its tail.  But the flint thing?   Don't think so.

I think the warthogs are kind of cute, despite how ugly they are.   They stand about 30 inches at the shoulder, are three to four feet long, and weigh anywhere from 120 to 250 lbs, with the males heavier than females.  They are omnivorous, eating mostly grass, berries, and roots, but also the occasional carrion they find.

They have a keen sense of smell but poor eyesight.   Their eyes are far back on their head, enabling them to watch for predators as they kneel on their front legs and eat.   Calluses form on a warthog piglet's front legs even before it is born.

What’s remarkable about them is that they can go several months without water, particularly valuable in a land that has frequent droughts, and can tolerate a higher body temperature than normal.

They are also all over the place, especially where people plant those nice green lawns that taste so good and where the soil is easy to dig, which must please the lawn-owners no end.   Warthogs, so-called because of two protuberances near the eyes and, on males, near their tusks, den up at night in holes dug by ardvarks.  They back in, ready to defend themselves with their tusks or run, which is their usual form of protection.   They can run as fast as 30 mph, or faster depending on what’s after them.

We had seen one explode from an aardvark hole at Mabula reserve, too fast to get photos.

Those warts, Brian says, are useful when the animal lies down as the tusks would otherwise hold the snout end of the skull off the ground in an awkward manner.  The warts enable the skull to lie in a relatively flat position.

Digging a hole in the lawn.

I watch the piglets play for a while, pushing each other with their snouts in mock fights, digging holes in the lawns, and attacking the sow to nurse.   

This angle shows the prominent wart on the mother warthog.

 Then two lie down beside each other to nap, but the other two won’t allow any sleeping and hassle them.

Then, it’s time to meet the others for our afternoon safari into Chobe National Park.  At the bottom of the stairs, I see some banded mongoose scampering around and stop to watch them digging in the hole the warthogs had been enlarging, as well as under the foundations of buildings.

They are 12 to 16 inches long and weigh between 3.5 and 5 lbs.   After pups emerge from the den, they will seek out a “helper” or “escort” that will feed them until they are able to forage for beetle, grasshoppers, etc., and small vertebrates.   The pup receives it food exclusively from its escort.

 

Time to go.  I’m still gobsmacked from our cruise on the Chobe River yesterday and can’t imagine anything that can top that.