Hound Dog
May 23, 2010, 2:59 PM
Post #4 of 8
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Re: [chicois8] hiking around San Cristobal de Las Casas
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2 years ago I was driving to Simojovel, about 6 mles out I came around a curve and a mountain loin was have a dog for lunch...he looked up and I hit the gas....
...and?
I am reminded of an event in my life that took place in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda in 1969. What made me think of that incident is that that mountain lion was doing what mountain lions do which is, whenever they have the opportunity, to eat dogs just like we eat chickens and some of us eat squirrels, they do so.
"Forty one years ago I was walking to the poor people´s tent encampment on the bluffs overlooking the Nile which flows through Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda on its way to the Mediterranean when, naively, I decided to take a short cut across the bush to reach the tent camp rather than stay on the main dirt road. Well, about 100 meters out I rounded a hillock surrounded by small, scraggly pines and the like and, certainly without any intent on my part, I scared the living hell out of an African buffalo, the single most dangerous creature in all of Africa, who had, until that time, been peacefully nibbling upon grass he thought his nourishment out in the bush in a national park he presumed was his bailiwick to be enjoyed without interruption by human interlopers and it was at that moment I had no escape other that that buffalo´s unpredictable decision their being irritable and unimaginably powerful creatures of the wild, as to whether or not to stomp me into the ground. I hid behind a three inch scrub tree and he made the decision not to charge which would have sent me and the spindly little tree to kingdom come.
I walked gingerly back to the main road and met an African kid on his way to the encampment pushing his bicycle. I asked if I could accompany him and he agreed but just a few meters up the road we spotted that enraged buffalo still pissed that I had scared him witless while eating his lunch and he began pawing the road bed and staring at us as if this were our last minutes on earth so I asked the African kid what we should do. He responded that we really had no choice. If we turned tail and ran there was no way we could outrun an enraged buffalo who would surely kill us both stomping us mercilessly into the sod of Africa but if we continued to "lackadaisically" walk toward him as if we were unconcerned about his presence but , at the same time, seemingly nonconfrontational, he might just let us go by on the theory that we were unworthy of instant death which is what we did and he did and that is why I am alive today so far.
It seems to me, chicois8, that whether one is driving to Simojovel or walking to the Nile, it is best not to disturb beasts enjoying a chance repast.
(This post was edited by Hound Dog on May 23, 2010, 3:11 PM)
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