The Deadliest Non-venomous Snake in Katavi

Imagine driving down the road in your open car, guiding away, pointing out this bird and that plant, when suddenly just above the speedometre appears a small green head, then neck, then body...meanwhile feet are working at bringing the car to a stop and getting out of this car without just diving out the door to leave your guests rolling along driverless.

This is the experience Gabriel had this week, not once but twice, two days in a row.  The first day he managed to stop the vehicle, looking for a stick for the snake to crawl onto, but it got nervous and went right back into the dashboard.  He continued driving and back at camp we identified the snake from photos the guests had taken.

Now confident that it was not poisonous, everyone carried on driving that evening and the following morning.

Planes landed, new guests stepped out and old guests flew away and Gabriel set out from the airstrip once again.  Shortly, he noticed the snake emerging again behind the steering wheel, and this time with greater confidence and aplumb was able to announce to his guests, while still driving, that they should have a look at the steering wheel.

The snake came out onto the mirror, was lifted and placed on a shrub, and the gamedrive continued, probably with the guests feet up on the seats.  "Welcome to Katavi everyone!"

Slender Green Snake

The Ealge and The Hare

The guinea fowl were jabbering away so loudly it was obvious there was a predator around.  There was a flurry of movement 100 metres away in the long grass, so I went in for a closer look.

An immature martial eagle, largest eagle in Africa, rose out of the grass and settled atop an acacia tree watching...waiting.

 

  To my surprise, below the tree there crouched a scrub hare, frozen in full view of the eagle. 

Both seemed to realize that gravity couldn’t get the eagle down to the hare faster than the hare could have legged it away from there, so a one and a half hour stand-off ensued.

Eventually the hare made a break for it, bolting at top speed across the open grassland.

The eagle launched itself into pursuit...

 ... but the hare turned a one-eighty and zoomed a beeline straight back toward the vehicle, turning to avoid it at the last second.

 

 Huge and built for power, able to take prey the size of small antelope, the eagle could not match the hare’s quick manoeuvres.  It returned to altitude and soared away as the hare bounded to safety back into the long grass.

 

Busy Busy

So our entire fleet of landrovers is out in the park this week.  That is to say, all four of them.  This is what we call extremely busy here at Chada.  We are hosting a total of twelve guests, a full camp for us with our six tents.

We know, that just doesn’t sound busy, but that is what we are all about here.  In addition to our fleet, one car each from the other two camps far up the river are also out today, bringing the vehicle count to a whopping six in the third largest park in Tanzania. 

Who’s with me here?  Tanzania is nearly a million square kilometres of bush, has fifteen national parks, and only the sprawling Ruaha and the Serengeti surpass Katavi in size, yet there are six vehicles moving about today.  I’ve seen more cars around a vervet monkey feeding frenzy at a picnic sight in Nairobi National Park.

So we’re just letting you know, Katavi is ridiculously busy at the moment, in case you were wondering what our busy season is like.

Meanwhile, we did manage to come up with a couple shots of creatures around camp, since the guides and guests have the cars.

 

The yellow-winged bat, one of our favourite flyers because they eat mosquitoes, but mostly because they reinforce our belief in the existence of aliens.

Then we have this naughty little fellow, known locally (just here actually) as the paper shredding mouse.  He was terrorizing us for several weeks, but it turns out he likes sausage more than peanut butter or cheese.  Imagine that.  We actually should have baited him with paper.  Here is a shot of his run to freedom following a brief incarceration.

Common around camp, but rarely sitting still in the sunlight, this was a lucky moment to find a purple crested turaco perched in the open.

And finally, our old tuskless bull elephant, Budha, reaching high.  He's been acting like a giraffe lately after realizing he actually has no tusks.