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Meme, continued from previous post
Ten things I've done that others might not have
4) Had 19 elephant in the front yard
The Serengeti again. One day a herd of elephant wandered through our yard. What else can I say? :)
5) Been mistaken for a terrorist in Heathrow Airport
Not as exciting as that makes it sound. Dad and I got to back to Kenya and Tanzania in 1991 because he was invited to speak at a conference in Nairobi, and we went to the Serengeti for the next week. We brought cameras, and Dad insisted I bring his 500mm lens (which I NEVER USED and had to haul around the whole stupid place, thankyouverymuch!!) and his homemade shoulder mount in my carry-on baggage for it. You can't use it holding the camera regularly: it's too sensitive to your involuntary movements and everything will be out of focus. So. Dad's homemade shoulder mount was an aluminum bar with a shoulder-thinger at one end to brace against your shoulder, a handle duct-taped to it at the other end, and a remote shutter release cable wound around it.
Did I mention that this was when Operation Desert Shield was two days away from becoming Operation Desert Storm?
At Heathrow Security - we got through security in Houston with no problem then, although I expect we wouldn't now - I got hauled aside and patted down, and they grabbed my bag out from under Dad's hands and put it under the supper-spiffy color X-ray machine. We explained what it was and offered to take it apart for them, and they thought about it for a while and then eventually allowed us to do so, then waved us on through.
I made Dad carry it in his luggage on the way home.
6) Been face-to-face with a lioness
Africa again, of course. We'd go out on short camping trips periodically while Dad would measure grass heights and string bird nets (very fine nets, strung up between two poles kind of like an almost-invisible volleyball net) up to catch and survey the sorts of birds that lived in that area. He'd band them and release them afterwards. The only birds I can remember accidentally dying were two that were savaged by a pygmy owl that got caught one day. That thing was a small ball of spite, and I can quite clearly remember its eyes glaring out at me through a hole in the basket into which Dad stuffed it prior to banding.
That owl was an animal I can quite clearly anthropomorphize. My dad was never the sort to anthropomorphize things, except once: he was driving along a road somewhere near Seronera, possibly near the Olduvai Gorge, with his window down, and he came to an area with trees overhanging the road. He spotted a leopard lying in the trees, which is often hard to do, and rolled his window up. He told me that as he slowly drove by, watching the leopard, the leopard watched him and clearly said "If I wanted you, I would have had you." Leopards are magnificent, of course. From a distance. They're the psycho killers of the feline world.
Whichg ets me back to the topic of this - lions. Lion are just big cats. They're not even really dangerous unless you run into young males on their own after they've been booted out of their pride and before they establish one of their own. (The man-killers on the Tsavo railroad about a century ago? Males on their own, IIRC.) They get complacent in a pride.) You can even walk - this is NOT recommended, but it's still possible - through a pride that's lolling about during the day. They only really get to be dangerous every other night, when they're hungry and haven't started to hunt yet, and the young males get really antsy and you start looking tasty. Other than that, they're big, curious, and often surprisingly friendly - they'll come up and play with the guy wires on your tent and investigate things you leave out. We once had a pride camp out near our house one night and some came up onto the porch and sniffed at the clay pots Dad had been experimenting with making, and one nigh the Lion People were following a pride in ther Land ROver, managed to accidentally roll it, and then spent a night inside the car while the pride they were following slept on and around it.
But that's not what I'm talking about. One night we were camping. We set up a tent to serve as base camp, storage, and cooking area, and slept in the Toyota after we'd heard of fellow researchers who woke up one morning to find that a lion had clawed a slit through the back of their tent one night. So ... this particular evening was one where nothing was going right. My parents were in the tent (it was a big one) trying to light the kerosene stove for dinner (which strikes me as a really stupid thing to do inside a tent. Ah well, this was 1975 or so, when everybody did stupid things like that). It wasn't lighting, and they were getting angry with it and each other and snarling at me, so my sense of self-preservation kicked in. I grabbed a flashlight, announced that I was going out to guard the trunk outside the tent (we had a porch-flap on the tent), and got the hell out of there. As I shone the flashlight in a circle around the tent, I saw, sitting by the washstand we had set up about ten feet away from the tent, a full-grown lioness. She was sitting there, just wondering what the hairless apes were up to, not aggressive at all.
I ran inside the tent, almost knocking the stove over which made my parents yell at me until I managed to get out "There's a lion out there!" We gave up on dinner and went to the car at that point - I sat on Dad's shoulders and Mom carried an insect net above her head so we'd look bigger, and got to the car safely. We drove around a bit and discovered a pride of lion had settled onto the kopjes (rock formations) behind our tent for the night, and we stayed in the car for the rest of the night.
7) Sat with chickens on the top of a Land Rover
Two of our Serengeti friends were a wildlife photographer and his writer wife, who'd tamed a cheetah enough that you could walk up to her, even though she still lived in the wild. They may have raised her from a cub; I don't know. All I remember is that she had a radio-collar on. Being intelligent, however, they didn't trust her to not attack a small hairless ape, so when we went with them to visit her, I got to sit on top of the Land Rover with a cage of chickens destined to be a treat for her while my parents went near her and took photos. We've got a photo somewhere that Dad took of Mom a few feet from the cheetah taking her photo.
Continued in next post
Ten things I've done that others might not have
4) Had 19 elephant in the front yard
The Serengeti again. One day a herd of elephant wandered through our yard. What else can I say? :)
5) Been mistaken for a terrorist in Heathrow Airport
Not as exciting as that makes it sound. Dad and I got to back to Kenya and Tanzania in 1991 because he was invited to speak at a conference in Nairobi, and we went to the Serengeti for the next week. We brought cameras, and Dad insisted I bring his 500mm lens (which I NEVER USED and had to haul around the whole stupid place, thankyouverymuch!!) and his homemade shoulder mount in my carry-on baggage for it. You can't use it holding the camera regularly: it's too sensitive to your involuntary movements and everything will be out of focus. So. Dad's homemade shoulder mount was an aluminum bar with a shoulder-thinger at one end to brace against your shoulder, a handle duct-taped to it at the other end, and a remote shutter release cable wound around it.
Did I mention that this was when Operation Desert Shield was two days away from becoming Operation Desert Storm?
At Heathrow Security - we got through security in Houston with no problem then, although I expect we wouldn't now - I got hauled aside and patted down, and they grabbed my bag out from under Dad's hands and put it under the supper-spiffy color X-ray machine. We explained what it was and offered to take it apart for them, and they thought about it for a while and then eventually allowed us to do so, then waved us on through.
I made Dad carry it in his luggage on the way home.
6) Been face-to-face with a lioness
Africa again, of course. We'd go out on short camping trips periodically while Dad would measure grass heights and string bird nets (very fine nets, strung up between two poles kind of like an almost-invisible volleyball net) up to catch and survey the sorts of birds that lived in that area. He'd band them and release them afterwards. The only birds I can remember accidentally dying were two that were savaged by a pygmy owl that got caught one day. That thing was a small ball of spite, and I can quite clearly remember its eyes glaring out at me through a hole in the basket into which Dad stuffed it prior to banding.
That owl was an animal I can quite clearly anthropomorphize. My dad was never the sort to anthropomorphize things, except once: he was driving along a road somewhere near Seronera, possibly near the Olduvai Gorge, with his window down, and he came to an area with trees overhanging the road. He spotted a leopard lying in the trees, which is often hard to do, and rolled his window up. He told me that as he slowly drove by, watching the leopard, the leopard watched him and clearly said "If I wanted you, I would have had you." Leopards are magnificent, of course. From a distance. They're the psycho killers of the feline world.
Whichg ets me back to the topic of this - lions. Lion are just big cats. They're not even really dangerous unless you run into young males on their own after they've been booted out of their pride and before they establish one of their own. (The man-killers on the Tsavo railroad about a century ago? Males on their own, IIRC.) They get complacent in a pride.) You can even walk - this is NOT recommended, but it's still possible - through a pride that's lolling about during the day. They only really get to be dangerous every other night, when they're hungry and haven't started to hunt yet, and the young males get really antsy and you start looking tasty. Other than that, they're big, curious, and often surprisingly friendly - they'll come up and play with the guy wires on your tent and investigate things you leave out. We once had a pride camp out near our house one night and some came up onto the porch and sniffed at the clay pots Dad had been experimenting with making, and one nigh the Lion People were following a pride in ther Land ROver, managed to accidentally roll it, and then spent a night inside the car while the pride they were following slept on and around it.
But that's not what I'm talking about. One night we were camping. We set up a tent to serve as base camp, storage, and cooking area, and slept in the Toyota after we'd heard of fellow researchers who woke up one morning to find that a lion had clawed a slit through the back of their tent one night. So ... this particular evening was one where nothing was going right. My parents were in the tent (it was a big one) trying to light the kerosene stove for dinner (which strikes me as a really stupid thing to do inside a tent. Ah well, this was 1975 or so, when everybody did stupid things like that). It wasn't lighting, and they were getting angry with it and each other and snarling at me, so my sense of self-preservation kicked in. I grabbed a flashlight, announced that I was going out to guard the trunk outside the tent (we had a porch-flap on the tent), and got the hell out of there. As I shone the flashlight in a circle around the tent, I saw, sitting by the washstand we had set up about ten feet away from the tent, a full-grown lioness. She was sitting there, just wondering what the hairless apes were up to, not aggressive at all.
I ran inside the tent, almost knocking the stove over which made my parents yell at me until I managed to get out "There's a lion out there!" We gave up on dinner and went to the car at that point - I sat on Dad's shoulders and Mom carried an insect net above her head so we'd look bigger, and got to the car safely. We drove around a bit and discovered a pride of lion had settled onto the kopjes (rock formations) behind our tent for the night, and we stayed in the car for the rest of the night.
7) Sat with chickens on the top of a Land Rover
Two of our Serengeti friends were a wildlife photographer and his writer wife, who'd tamed a cheetah enough that you could walk up to her, even though she still lived in the wild. They may have raised her from a cub; I don't know. All I remember is that she had a radio-collar on. Being intelligent, however, they didn't trust her to not attack a small hairless ape, so when we went with them to visit her, I got to sit on top of the Land Rover with a cage of chickens destined to be a treat for her while my parents went near her and took photos. We've got a photo somewhere that Dad took of Mom a few feet from the cheetah taking her photo.
Continued in next post