Meet Hank

On my past trips to Kenya, I have driven some interesting cars. The first year, there was the intrepid, decrepit Suzuki that Corinne and I nicknamed Twiga ("giraffe" in Swahili) due to its resemblance to a giraffe carcass we saw on our first trip in the car. Twiga was very little more than a tin can with wheels, but it ran faithfully and gamely tackled every obstacle it encountered.

Last year there was The Matatu, Dan's white pop-top tourist van. While miles above Twiga in terms of comfort, The Matatu had its own issues: no four-wheel drive, very low clearance, a steadily worsening oil leak that eventually required a refill every two days, and an increasing unwillingness to start in the mornings without a lengthy push-start by five or so Ol Pej security workers. Add to this the ridiculousness of me driving an entire van for just myself and the constant hassle of being mistaken for a tourist van that had found something interesting to watch, and I would prefer to drive Twiga any day. But I take what I can get and regard the problems generally with amusement rather than frustration.

This year, I once again have a new ride, graciously purchased for me by Dan. I cannot overstate how thankful I am for this purchase, as it has saved me from being stuck with the Matatu (whose engine was entirely rebuilt since last summer and apparently runs fine, but still lacks four wheel drive and clearance and is generally an unwieldy field vehicle). I knew this car, a red Suzuki Maruti, from last year as it previously belonged to Stefan, who went to Ol Pej with me last summer and studied Grant's gazelle. While I was recruiting people to help push-start my giant white van in the morning, Stefan was motoring effortlessly away to begin his fieldwork. To say I coveted Stefan's car is an understatement. I first drove the car three weeks ago when I left Mpala for Ol Pej. To my delight, it ran beautifully and got me to Ol Pej with no problem. I spent the hour-long drive contemplating the car's name, and by about halfway it was clear that its name is Hank. Hank is simple, with no frills, but friendly and accessible.

In the past three weeks I have spent probably as much time with Hank as I have asleep and have gotten to know his various quirks quite well. First, Hank is not a morning person. I have to choke him a bit to get him started in the morning, but after that initial coaxing, he runs fine the rest of the day. Hank's tires are balding, which makes for interesting adventures when it gets muddy. I was wary of going out during or directly after rainstorms for fear of the mud, but I was assured that it is nearly impossible to get a Maruti stuck because of its light weight and good four-wheel drive and that if I did manage it somehow, all I had to do was call the Ol Pej Control office and a truck would come pull me out. It turns out that all of the Maruti's mud-proof qualities are negated by tires with too little grip. I got stuck two Fridays ago without even lodging my wheel in a hole. I just did not have the grip to motor through the slick mud and once I lost momentum I was done. Control came to pull me out, scoffed that I wasn't even stuck, but conceded that maybe I had been right to call when they couldn't get me going without using another truck to haul me out. They blamed the tires, but aside from this one stuck incident and some slipping and sliding after it rains, I really can't complain too much.

Last year I was amazed when Stefan told me Hank's tape player worked and that he could play his iPod through a tape hook-up. I brought my tape hook-up this year and after some fiddling, found that the stereo does indeed work, but that the volume for some reason does not get high enough to be of any real use. Perhaps some more fiddling will fix this problem, but looking at the stereo, which is barely attached to the rest of the car and constantly jiggles loose from its casing, I think I should consider myself lucky to have achieved the functionality I have.

Hank's grey hard top is technically removable, although I am not sure quite how. I think it would be amusing to motor around with the top off at some point, but the difficulty of removing it and, I'm sure, replacing it as well as the exposure to the elements probably makes the effort not worthwhile. Removing the top would probably also be the only way to get more dust in the car than there already is.

True to the Suzuki name, Hank has all the shock absorption of a cardboard box and rough roads can be quite jarring. The windows don't quite close all the way anymore, and when it rains, water leaks onto my feet through a mysterious hole by the clutch pedal. The backseat is very high up for some reason, so that passengers cannot even see out their windows, and there are a handful of unexplained noises that periodically issue from various parts of the car. By my American standards, Hank is a heap of junk. But by my field standards, Hank is awesome and perfect. He gets me from A to B with very little hassle and is generally comfortable to sit in hour after hour while watching antelope. What more can I ask for?

Big Cats

Zebra Plain, where I've been watching my tommies, has been the place to be the last couple of days. Yesterday afternoon when I arrived after lunch I noticed that the ungulates were more clumped to one side of the plain than usual and were a bit jumpy. Things were also unusually quiet: usually the buffalos are grunting and the zebras are making a commotion as they chase each other around. It didn't take much effort to figure out what was up.

Many ungulates exhibit "fascination behavior" when they detect a predator which involves not running away but rather staring at and even approaching or following it so as to keep and eye on it. Gazelle are faster than all their predators except for cheetahs, so as long as they know where the threat is and are not surprised, they can generally escape with ease. Even cheetahs typically must get within a certain distance of their prey undetected to be successful at killing it, so by keeping tabs on the predator, the prey avoids a surprise attack and is relatively safe.

Thus by following the gaze of a group of fixated hartebeest I was able to find the cause of the ungulates' strange behavior: two cheetahs, a mother and a nearly full-grown cub, were crouched in the grass, with just their heads peeking out. I watched for awhile, but they were a fair ways off and all I could see where the tops of their heads. I snapped some pictures and headed to the end of the plain where all my study animals were grouped.

As evening approached, I finished up for the day and started heading back. I checked for the cheetahs on my way, figuring that they had probably moved on since it had been several hours and all the prey on the plain knew to avoid them. Not so! I spotted the cub near a small bush about twenty meters off the road. Soon mother's head popped up in the grass nearby. It was clear that she held out some hope of snagging and unsuspecting meal, since she was well-hidden in the grass, surveying the distant herds. However, junior was bored and not cooperating. While his mother tried to keep a low profile, he stalked and pounced at birds, gnawed on the branch of the bush, and generally made his presence known. He ran up and pounced on his mom, who gave him a bite on the head to get him to pipe down. He caught on to his mother's plan at this point, but proceeded to botch things up anyway: a group of zebra with a young foal crossed the plain a couple hundred meters away from the cheetahs. They were way too far away for the cub to hope to catch the foal, but he tried anyway with only a half-hearted attempt at stealth. As he sprinted towards them and they ran easily away, his mother sat up in the grass, giving up. The cub got another bite on the head when he returned and mom flopped down out of view in the vegetation. I had gotten many excellent shots, but junior decided to help me out some more. He approached my car until he had about halved the distance between us and sat there modeling for me for about ten minutes, until the light was too low for photos and I just sat and watched.

This morning I set out bright and early and as soon as I arrived on Zebra Plain I spotted two lions. I had seen lionesses before, and gotten some good pictures, but had never gotten a good look or photo of a male lion. Here was my chance: it was a female and a male with a big dark mane. They were in a hurry to be somewhere, so I only got a handful of photos, but as far as I was concerned that was a great start to the morning. Things got even better when, continuing on, I found another lioness and two tiny cubs on a small unidentifiable carcass. These were less obliging than the cheetahs and stayed mostly hidden in the grass, but I got some good photos and got to watch them for awhile before the lioness got antsy and moved the cubs a bit further off the road.
Remarkably, none of the tourists who are constantly passing by during my focals and even interrupting to ask if I've seen lions or rhinos or cheetahs were around for these sightings, save for a carful that stopped by the cheetahs as the light was fading. It was nice to be able to enjoy these amazing moments quietly by myself.