Blog Aug Hiding Lions

Blog 22 - Aug '14 - Hiding out with the lions

This blog originally started with “This month I was fortunate enough to…” which reminded me that even in the hard times in Etosha there is something to do to unwind. There isn’t a massage parlour or a cinema but something is always happening as long as you are willing to be involved and have proven yourself helpful (or at least not a hindrance) to have around. This month my ‘Get-out-of Okaukuejo-free-card’ was the lion survey. The lion survey is conducted in Etosha on a 4-yearly basis to estimate the park’s population by counting all lions that come into calling stations. The stations consist of a vehicle and speaker set-up that plays a sound recording of a dying buffalo for 1 hour. The last estimate of the population of the park was 450-600. This year they anticipate the findings to be similar although they hope for a more precise estimate as they are greatly increasing the number of calling stations.

I was at a braai with a few people one night when, a few drinks into the evening, it was suggested that I come with them for the first two nights of surveying which would commence in less than 12 hours. After a lot of saying “no I can’t I have to work” and the subsequent cries of “Come on, you can take two days off, they are a Sunday and a public holiday”, I decided to go. The prospect of getting away from crime central (the research camp has been broken into 3 times this month) and the camp’s leopard* was too good to pass up. My next two Sundays will be spent working hard to make up for my time away but I figure it will be worth it. So the next morning, or more accurately later that morning, I arose to pack up and leave for an unknown adventure. The snippets that I did catch included “north-east of the park”, “lion survey” and “bring alcohol”.I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. I’m a great place for you to tell a story and let your users know a little more about you.

Piling into a bakkie, myself and two ministry employees set off for a 2 hour drive to our ‘accommodation’ for the next two nights – a three story shade cloth and timber hide (see what I did there with the pun-tastic title). The hide was beside a staff-only waterhole that was watering 50+ elephants at the time of our arrival. After setting up our gear on the second level and my bedroll on the top level we got down to the business at hand – sundowners by the waterhole. You’ll notice I didn’t mention the first level – it is low enough to be reached by elephants and lions and we weren’t feeling that adventurous. As the survey was called off for the night (the usual government shambles of a broken down vehicle and late arrivals) our sundowners stretched into the night when we were joined by another two staff. By this point it felt like a repeat of the night before – same people, same food and a reappearance of the Captain (a.k.a. Captain Morgan). All that was different was a discernible improvement in location

It was at this point that the remote and wild nature of the hide became more apparent. Without a bathroom block, running water or a fence, the toilet trips were quite the adventure. First I had to get C.M. to drive out far enough so that we couldn’t be seen from the hide (as a non-employee I can’t drive the government cars) and then it was a game of cat and mouse. Or hyena and human as it were. Our first trip to the loo was cut short when I spotted a hyena ~40m away from the chosen loo spot so I hurriedly jumped back in the bakkie, pulling up my pants in the process and got C.M. to drive another few hundred meters to try again. We then had to move another few hundred metres so C.M. could get out as the hyenas had caught up with us already.

I had a fairly patchy sleep between the tower rocking whenever anyone shifted in their sleep and the numerous animal noises but my sleep was clearly deep at times – I awoke in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of bone crunching – we’d all slept through lions killing a springbok barely 100m away. Damn. That day was set aside for testing the sound equipment. Surprisingly, my Workplace Health and Safety training came in handy when calibrating the sound levels from each speaker set-up as I worked out how best to test the sounds levels and explained the difference between dBA and dBc. That night we set off after the obligatory sundowners (as backup team we were mostly there for morale support and to play around with night vision gear). For 6 hours we drove from station to station listening to dying buffalo for four of the six hours. Fortunately, the sound of buffalo is more pleasant than dying pigs (a sound that is often used in lion collaring and could possibly turn a person insane after more than 30 minutes). The night was a success with 18 lions seen at 8 calling stations. Eight stations down, 124 to go...

The next day we headed home, thankfully in time for a double data collection session. It was an amazing two days between learning new techniques, sleeping in an open hide, getting away from tourists and spending time with a great group of people who let me tag along. Coming home was also nice as two of the group had been kind enough to let me housesit while they finished up the field work. I say kind enough because my sole job is to make sure the power doesn’t trip – hardly enough to justify me living in (or more accurately squatting in) their house when I get the benefits of living in a real house, with a real kitchen and most importantly an indoor bathroom that is leopard proof!

* Now about that leopard… We have recently had a leopard lurking around Okaukuejo, inside the fencing. Just in case I needed proof that he has spent time in the research camp I managed to capture a picture of him on a camp camera trap. The camera traps were deployed to deter and record the thieves but seem to have a dual purpose now. The photo’s timestamp shows he was leaving the research camp less than 10 minutes after I was walking between my tent, the kitchen and the bathroom block. So I guess that hyper-vigilant because-I-know-there-is-a-leopard-around flashlight effort of mine was less effective than I thought because he was no doubt in the camp when I was walking around. Perhaps driving from my tent to the toilets the night before wasn’t as paranoid as I thought. And knowing how smart leopards are I may have to change up my routine to be less predictable once I am back in camp.