by Grace Horne, of Colby College
We had many close encounters with wildlife during our time in Botswana. One night during dinner, Shayla walked to the kitchen tent to put her dish away. Her light illuminated a male hyena. Gen informed us that this guy’s name was Ed. Ed was obviously just interested in our food. He opened our cooler with his mouth but ran away with the lid when we tried to scare him away. Eventually we were successful in scaring him off and we found the cooler lid in a few short minutes. It had an impressive impression of Ed’s teeth in it. There was more to the dinner that Ed interrupted: we had mopane worms. Mopane worms are caterpillars (order: Lepidoptera) that feed on mopane trees. They are eaten as a protein in Botswana. The way we had them prepared (dried but then rehydrated), they tasted like sunflower seeds with a slight squish. We also had pap, which is a base made of maize meal. It is often eaten with the hands and is a great filler after a long day out and about in the heat. The meal was prepared by the one and only KC.
Another close encounter with wildlife happened in late February. We were driving along a transect when we saw a male elephant in the middle of the road. He was one of the larger elephants that we had seen. We typically age elephants by size. We figured that his massive stature put him in the 35+ year old category. The elephant flapped his ears at us, an obvious sign of aggression. He mock charged at us and was only dissuaded by the engine revs of our truck. Another megafaunal threat is the hippopotamus, a few of which resided in a river that flowed near our Dizhana campsite. We heard the hippos all day and night long with their maniacal laugh-like sounds. Sometimes their timing was so perfect that someone at our campfire will tell a joke and the hippos will “laugh” right at the punchline. Their noisemaking in the middle of the night was no joke—we had seen them on our camera traps walking around just outside of camp.
Perhaps the most exciting carnivore encounter was with African wild dogs. We had seen just a glimpse of them chasing impala through the bush near camp but could not get a close enough look. Disappointed, we hoped to see them again but closer. As our good luck would have it, one of our leaders received a call during class—dogs near sheperd’s tree scrub. We immediately hopped into the cars and drove off. We caught up with the wild dogs just after a kill when they were sated and lazing about. Some were playing with each other and wrestling in the green grass. Some were just relaxing in the shade of a sheperd’s tree. Eventually the dogs ran off together into the distance. It was an incredible moment of peace after destruction.
