7-One Egg, Lallo

Spotted Deer
by Phil Haffley

After three days of tiger hunting, I had to take a morning off.  At some point while I slept, someone had snuck in and taken our laundry to be washed.  (Actually I learned from Phil that he had set the laundry outside our door.)  When it was returned to us, it had been washed in muddy river water and ironed.  The service did help us stretch our clothes to a full three weeks.

Every waking moment seemed to be taken up with travel, eating, or exhaustion.  Even when I took time off, I was fog-headed.  It showed in my handwriting.  What I need to do is limit my sojourns as a chronicler to one excursion per day.

I could stay at the lodges and take photographs of landscapes and the special people who work at these places.  They do seem to be content with their lives.  There are stories to write at those lodges—and some poetry.

For example, for each midmorning breakfast Lallo, the man in charge, asked me how I wanted my eggs prepared and how many.  No matter how I wanted them prepared, I always asked for one egg.  I would receive two or three eggs and then accused him of not being able to count to one.  But for my last breakfast, I received just one egg—and his arm to escort me to the parking lot where our bus waited.  I think Lallo was just trying to put some weight on these old bones.

Spotted Deer
by Phil Haffley

Spotted Deer
by Phil Haffley

6-Tyger, Tyger

My first tiger was a young female with a sister somewhere else in the park.  I took  some shots of her walking through the forest, but missed some when she was nearer the vehicles.  Mary Ann, who was with me, gave me copies of a couple of her shots.  I think she would have shared all of her shots if I had asked her.

Phil was jealous of my encounter.  He had yet to see a tiger, but the second day he made up for the deficit by watching a five-year old male cooling off in a watering hole.  I had a second row seat to a repeat performance that afternoon.

We both missed the best show on the last day of this mini-shoot.  Some of the photographers saw a tiger family with two 9-month-old tiger cubs—one male and one female.  The young tigress was carrying a dead baby rhesus monkey by the nape of the neck as if it were her cub.  The corpse was not bleeding nor obviously injured, but her play with it had probably been too rough.  Now it was but a doll for a mother-to-be to practice with.

Tiger
by Phil Haffley

Tiger
by Phil Haffley

Tiger
by Phil Haffley

Australia-6

Australian Magpie 

Black Cockatoo

Rainbow Lorikeet

Regent Bowerbird 

Satin Bowerbird 

                               Male's bower or nest he built to lure a female.

Australia 5

Eastern Whipbird 

Eastern Yellow Robin 

Striated Pardalote

Splendid Fairy Wren

White-browed Scrubwren 

Yellow-throated Scrubwren

Australia-4

Barking Owl 

Barn Owl

Wedge-tailed Eagle 

Australia-3

Australian Black Swan

Australian Pelican

Australian Fur Seals

Australian Sea Lion

Australia-2

King Parrot

Crimson  Rosella

Galah

Australia-1

King Parrot

Crimson  Rosella

Galah

Crossing

It’s follow-the-leader,
the name of a game of thousands at a time.
In a wave, these wildebeests charge across
a beach of cropped savanna grasses toward
a perilous toil.

A froth of horns
atop this bestial wave flows out of
an acacia woodland and down toward a ramp
between boulders along an embankment of
the Mara River.

The leaders balk—
stopping there to search for courage to brave
swift currents, hungry crocodiles,
and bloated carcasses of kin killed during
prior crossings.

Assorted vehicles
line up to jockey for position, some blocking
the far-side ramps where the herd would climb
out of the water to escape the river's perils.
One wildebeest jumps.

Chaos then splashes
into the boulder-strewn river as wildebeests
attempt to follow one another across.
Currents push the bodies downstream so
their course bows.

Some vehicles move,
open a space where successful swimmers
can climb out of the river and up toward
fields of lush grasses, a feast all the way to
the calving grounds.

Another leader
chooses a different ramp down to the water’s
edge.  Lines merge.  Then a third track opens,
and three lines mingle.  Swimming heads and horns
become a mob.

More than once,
jumpers land on swimmers, water cushioning
the blows.  One looses her footing on a wet
ramp, dives in upside down.  She rights
herself unharmed.

Some turn away
opting to cross another day.  Splitting
the wave, they return to the cropped field.  A yearling
hesitates not knowing which direction
her mother went.

Last to cross,
this youngster was neither leader nor follower, but
a solo artist willing to risk injury or death
crossing the mad Mara River during the Great
Migration.