Hills on Holiday, Part 2

As promised, here are some of the animals we encountered during our October vacation. We feel fortunate to live in a place where we can see these animals in the wild with no cages or bars.
We took a boat trip down the Kazinga Channel between Lake Edward and Lake George. We had the boat to ourselves remarkably and were delighted to see so many animals coming to the water for a drink and bath. The elephants were serene and plenetiful.

Waterbuck

Buffalo in the river. Some are red colored because they are mixed with a forest race of buffalo.

Uganda is well known among bird watchers, and the river trip gave us a great opportunity to see many of them together. I was photographing the birds when these hippos popped up to say hello.

The mother hippos did not like having us around. Two even charged our boat.

Banded mongooses make their home at the Mweya Lodge where we visited for the boat ride and lunch. One that we saw even had a collar.

We saw several warthogs with their tails high as they ran across the dirt track. We also saw a few like this big fella taking respite from the heat in mud pools.

The Queen Elizabeth National Park is famous for its tree climbing lions. We had just made the decision to drive across to a further part of the park in order to see them when we noticed two lionesses heading for a candelabra tree. This tree has a trunk resembling a normal tree, but the branches are more like a cactus. They perched in the tree for about ten minutes looking for prey but spotted nothing and returned to the male and another female. It was very exciting to get to see them in the tree.

Bands of baboons are often near the roads in game parks. QENP was no exception.

I have no idea what kind of Kenyan spider this is, but it's body alone was perhaps 3 inches long, and it had a hairy gold and white back. There were three of them outside our cottage.

In Kenya we had daily Blue and Vervet monkeys outside our cottage. This Blue monkey got a little closer than we expected.

All in all it was a great trip of enjoying the creatures the Lord created, including the two-legged variety in our own family!

The Cobra

This Forest Cobra has been lurking for a long time, but only at night. Yesterday Richard, our guard/gardener, and I were clearing out some dead leaves and branches where Tiger (our cat) had followed it a few nights ago.

Tiger spotted him today and growled which alerted Richard, who is afraid of snakes. He called me, and I came up with Cooper followed by Tessa and Jack. The snake was mixed in with the vines above our wall. I called Dusty at the office to get his opinion on how to handle it when I realized that I would be the one to kill it since Richard is afraid. He advised me to get his motorcycle helmet in case it was a spitting cobra, and a long piece of rebar. I grabbed a long piece of wood on the way. Dusty then called back to say he was on his way.

By the time I got back to the wall, a small crowd of passersby had gathered from the street at our wall. I figured I would poke it with the wood and someone could kill it with the rebar. Richard had gone inside to get a kerosene sprayer. When I approached the snake (with Tessa, Jack, and Cooper behind me with some lady) with my helmet and wood, people realized I was serious, and Richard started spraying it. The kerosene made it writhe and move fast as it's apparently poisonous to snakeskin. People began yelling and running. In the middle of the commotion Dusty drove up, and a man grabbed the wood and started whaling on it, beating it out of the vine and onto the ground, where he killed it.

So I can't claim the kill, but I'm taking credit for the initiative at least - everyone else was simply gawking and unwilling to approach it or make a plan. We brought it inside the gate after thanking the crowd, measured it at 6'4", took some photos, and gave Tiger a treat.

Even Cooper got a hold of it. The guards are happy to see it dead, and Dusty and Jack skinned it for me. I want a belt!! We'll see. I doubt anyone around here knows how to tan a snakeskin; neither do we. Do you?

Our book says it is the "largest and most impressive cobra in Africa." So this one is not a big Forest Cobra, but it was big enough to do some serious damage! I wouldn't ordinarily kill a snake, but knowing that this snake had the potential to kill, and knowing our small kids play games all over our garden was enough to send this one to meet his maker.

African adventures still continue after eight years!