A few days ago, I had a dream that was fairly easy to interpret. I dreamed that I was watching lions, hyenas, and wild dogs fight over a wildebeest carcass. I have never seen a kill and I was still trying to get over the disappointment of just missing some wild dogs when they passed about a mile from camp the previous week; though I had rushed out to find them at my earliest opportunity, they had already moved on. So clearly the dream was just a manifestation of deepest desires.
Fast forward to this morning when Vianney, one of our guides, radios me at 8:00 AM to say that he and his guests had found a pack of wild dogs. Just 30 minutes from camp. I dropped what I was doing, hopped in a vehicle, and went out on a "reconnaisance mission" (a manager always has to know what's going on out there!). Sure enough, the guests led me to a pack of 15 dogs lying on the road. Though they didn't quite let me crawl up to them, they were quite cooperative and when they did begin to wander off, they made sure to stick to the road.
I followed them from a distance while they eyed some waterbuck but never seemed to fancy their chances. They continued running up and over a hill...and then came tearing back down the other side barking and growling like mad! I rushed up to the hill to see what had scared them and found a pair of mating lions.
The lion, one of the two scarred, shaggy, territorial males in the area, couldn't even be bothered to get up from his shady lair. The dogs, after retreating to the top of the hill, gave it a lot of bark before realizing they had no bite and ran off to lie in some shade themselves.
Compared to my dream, one might be inclined to say that the real-life version was a bit anti-climactic. Fortunately for me, there's no such thing as an anti-climactic wild dog sighting, or lion sighting for that matter. I'm just thankful that the Selous is so considerate of my dreams. Since I missed my family's Thanksgiving tradition of saying what each of us is thankful for, I offer up the following picture as evidence of my 2010 submission.
