The Snake, The Scorpion, The Lions and The Scrub Hare

Warm Greetings from the Luangwa…

“Bwangi”  How Are You?

“Bweno, Bwangi”  Fine, How Are You?

Snake

Steve Tolan, Co-founder and director of Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust, where we are staying, is an Honorary Wildlife and Forestry Officer. His work takes him out patrolling the Game Management Area and checking for illegal logging and subsequent work related to the reporting and seizure of illegally cut timber, he can be gone for much of the day. This has meant, with Anna away in the UK following the death of her Dad, that we are surrogate Aunties to busy Betty, who at 7 months is starting to be more and more independent, an absolute joy and now also being weaned – so a ta, tantrum-my. One afternoon Kaye was on the back verandah with Betty, Coco and Molly (the Jack Russell Terriers) and Jude was intermittently working on the Mac in the lounge room at the far end of the house. On one walk back down the central hallway – suddenly Jude saw a movement within centimetres of her falling foot – A Snake! He slithered under the lounge room door; previously shut to keep a marauding Betty from bouncing on the Mac. Carefully, Jude opened the door to try to get a line-of-sight on the snake. Yes! There he was – sliding along the skirting board. 60cms long and as thick as an index finger. 

Oh dear. There is a snake in the house…

Calling out to Kaye to keep Betty and the dogs at the other end of the house, Jude watched (and filmed) the snake for a while – under the lounge, behind the curtains, along every wall - he obviously wanted out! He had great traction on the rugs but the moment he hit the polished concrete he had to work really hard to get any forward movement, looking more like a side-winder! One such foray onto the concrete took him past a small lizard only 10cm’s long – who immediately attacked the snake with three quick strikes on the serpents side, as it slithered by, as if to say “Oi! This is my lounge room.”. Jude tired of the keep-the –snake-in-sight-until-Steve-comes-home game in 20 minutes – so as Snake tried to get a grip on the smooth wall, to no avail but persistently trying - Jude whipped out to the storeroom and grabbed the snake wrangling stick and back in a flash before he could disappear under something. As Snake was so slim – she checked the aperture of the closed grip with her finger to make sure if she did manage to catch him – he wouldn’t boil out the other side and up the stick to take revenge on her! Yep – it looked like the aperture was small enough to hold a finger-diameter snake. Deciding that acting like she knew what she was doing was better than timidity and girly shrieks, she just walked up within sticks length, laid the catching-end open in front of snake who reared gently to go over the bottom of the catcher and then pressed the handle! Walla! Snake-Wrangler! Oh, no. The aperture IS too big for this sized snake – as he wriggled through 10cm, 20cm... With a calm and purposeful stride she popped him out the window and onto the ground, let go of the handle and off he went to Snakey-Freedom.

When Steve got home of course, we were all a-twitter with the Snake-News of the day. Showing him the movie footage, we consulted a Zambian Snake Guide book and identified him as a Stiletto Snake, the most distinguishing feature being how incredibly shiny he was. Dark grey-black, virtually a patent-gloss snake. Highly dangerous. Still he wasn’t aggressive – just worried about being inside.

Scorpions!

There are things that no-one want to encounter inside ones clothes and that is a scorpion. Reading Daphne Sheldricks ‘The Orphans of Tsavo’ last week – Jude read out a story to Kaye (in the absence of TV) where, whilst camping – Daphne was stung by a yellow Scorpion. Sounded horrible, painful and something one fervently wished to never happen!

The weather here has begun to cool at long last – the days are a lovely 27 degrees Celcius and the nights a cool 15! Bliss for sleeping the night through – but this also means wearing long sleeves in the morning for the first time since our arrival. Steve was out and the Chipemble staff were working around the house. Jude and Kaye were on Betty Detail. Jude went back down to the Bushhouse to get some forgotten thing and decided whilst there to visit the ‘loo. Sitting down and then reaching back for the ‘loo paper – suddenly bang, bang, bang – three lightning fire SOMETHING’s sting on the back of her arm inside her shirt. One has NEVER seen anyone get out of a buttoned shirt as fast. Not wanting to take it back over her head in case WHATEVER-it-was came in contact with face or hair. Flinging the shirt down she immediately grabbed some sting-calmative from the First Aid kit and applied it. Then with shirt lying on the ground, she is ashamed to admit it, bought her foot down on the shirt – almost heavily- but wait! Oh – no what was that grinding sound? Her reading glasses in the top pocket started to crush… Pulling the g-forces on the stomp – and saving her glasses she was able to regain some kindness and humanity and figured “Whatever” it was inside did not deserve to die. So, picking the shirt up by the collar and flicking it – revealed the source of the pain. Whew! It was ONLY a black scorpion – 3cms long. All this happened in less than a minute. Catching Scorpion on a piece of thin card and a cup she rescued and relocated it to the bushes a good 5 metres from the bushhouse. The stinging and burning continued for a good hour afterward, but didn’t swell and there were no further side affects.

A few days later, Ruben – who is employed by us to keep-house, bake bread and do laundry and does a terrific job – came up with a match-box in hand saying “Judy – I have something to show you!” he opened the match-box and inside was a yellow scorpion. “EEK! Where was it?” Ruben replied “Under the table in your kitchen. Don’t worry I have caught him now – I check everyday, everywhere for scorpions to make sure they will not sting you”. “Ruben can you do me a favour and walk to the Mozambique border before releasing him please?” “No problem, madam…”   

The Lions and the Warthog

One late afternoon, Steve came racing over to the Bushhouse to tell us that lion had just killed a warthog close by, up on the banks of the Chowo River. Poor Wartie! We grabbed our cameras, binocs and threw our boots on and walked (fast) up to the scene. Positioning this way and that we tried to peer into the bushes to see them. Being within 20 metres of lion – on the ground, on your own two feet feels incredibly… Alive! (Or stupid…) Jude remembered the old Bushman trick of holding a stick above one’s head to make yourself appear bigger – even though at 6’2” she was the tallest of the three of us. Must of worked because they did not come out to see us off! That’s her theory and she is sticking to it! Finding no joy in looking into the deeply shaded bushes, and no kill-commotion happening we headed back to the house – talking, as we walked, about going down to the banks of the Luangwa River for our customary ‘Sundowners’. Then Richarb called us from the men’s house 50 metres away – “Lion!” We hurried over and sure enough a lioness was walking with purpose toward the mopane scrubland across the open ground, she contact called – and another appeared, then another – three lions! Kaye walked a further 10 metres towards them and bracing against a mopane bush to stop her video camera from shaking and took some really good footage. Jude, with her zoom-lens, stayed well back and zoomed up to take a photo - then the red-battery light blinked and the camera turned itself off, of course. Still a great sighting and one to be remembered forever more. Our first ever lion sighting, whilst we were on-foot.

The Hippo and the Scrub Hare 
Poor old hippo in a fast-drying dambo (waterhole) about 10 kms from Chipembele appears to be dying. He has been in basically the same spot for two weeks, he comes, he goes, but he is definitely getting skinnier by the day. This is nature, a natural death, still - each time we drive by and he is there, we say a silent wish that he will die sooner rather than later. This is real nature and nature’s death – the warthog who became the snack-sized meal for the lions, the hippo on his last legs, the scrub hare who screamed in the night on Thursday night as she was hunted and presumably killed by some unknown predator. All of these deaths are part of the life-cycle. In our ritualised, clean, super-marketed existence in the cities and towns of the west – we rarely, if ever, see or experience the raw, powerful, visceral reality of life-death struggle.

On Friday, taking Coco and Molly and Betty for a wander up the red gravel and sand driveway, Coco suddenly stopped and showed a LOT of interest in something nestled at the side, in a small depression. On closer inspection Jude found a tiny rabbit! What to do? Coco was very interested licking Rabbit’s fur and nuzzling, no predatory intent – just interest. Jude picked Rabbit up, because she is human and despite knowing it was probably the wrong thing to do… The rabbit screamed a little rabbity-fear call and then settled perfectly still in her hands. Walking back up to the house Jude showed Steve the rabbit – “It’s a baby scrub hare about a week or so old. Shouldn’t be away from his mother.” What to do? We decided to put him back in the depression in case Mum came looking for him. We later remembered hearing the rabbit scream the night before. Five hours later, Steve was out and scrub hare was spotted by Rodgers wandering about out in the open by himself – easy prey. Coco was ‘guarding’ him and herding him back towards the house. Scrub Hare Rescue sprang into action. He wasn’t dehydrated, so we just popped him in a soft cloth tunnel in a crate to calm him down and make him feel safe. Feeding him long life milk, out of the tiniest bottle we have, he lapped up a little but wasn’t feeding voraciously, trying again at 9PM with a similar result, we settled to bed. We made a nest for him from grass and an old t-shirt and settled him down with a heavy cover over the crate and he went to sleep. First thing, we offered him a bottle and he drank and drank from the teat! As Jude fed him, settled on an old cream-coloured tea towel, 70 little ‘pepper ticks’ leapt off him onto the towel! It was phenomenal. In between sucks Jude squished the tiny blood-filled ticks. No kindness practiced with the ticks!

Later this morning Rodgers and Richarb made a few repairs to one of the bigger rescue cages to ensure safety inside and no escape routes and we relocated him from crate to cage this afternoon. This is the second scrub hare Chipembele has rescued – the first ‘Kally’; which is the chiNyanja name for scrub hare, was successfully rehabilitated after three month and released back to the wild. He will still go in the crate and sleep in the security of the Bushhouse at night for a few weeks. We have named Scrub Hare “Milo” in honour of Coco who found and rescued him.

6 weeks…

We sit and ponder our time here – 6 weeks has rushed by already! Kaye is marvelling at how quickly one becomes accustomed to, but not blasé about, the remarkable African bush. The elephant crossing the river in the golden morning light, seeing giraffe wandering through the bush on the way back from town, warthogs mud-bathing at the edge of the Chipembele Lake just outside our door, lions roaring in the night…the constant, wonderful calls of myriad diurnal birds – and Betty asleep in your lap.

Wasn’t life always like this?
Couldn’t it always be?

Warm Waves and Love from the Luangwa,

Jude and Kaye