A question I am asked a lot, is “Do you miss the wildlife in Africa?” and “Were you not scared of all the dangerous animals?”
My answer to the first is, yes I do miss the wildlife. The answer to the second is, only when I get too close, and there are no trees to climb. The latter does not apply to elephants and leopards. The elephants can reach very high, and they can also push the tree down, no matter how thick the tree. Leopards can climb trees very well.
I also have to point out that we do not ride elephants to work, we do not have lions in our gardens. As far as South Africa is concerned, you have to go to a game reserve to see any of the “Big Five”. There are parts of Africa where I did encounter many animals outside game parks. I did some work on game reserves as a wildlife conservationist, as well as taking people on game walks. I always got asked which animals are the most dangerous. My point of view on this is simply, if it can outrun you, it is dangerous.
This brings me to wildlife in Sweden. As tracking animals on foot is one of my hobbies, I cannot wait to go in to the forests to do some tracking. My knowledge of Swedish wildlife is very limited at this stage, and I know that there are wolves, bears, lynx, elk and reindeer to keep me busy for a while. I have not yet seen any intimidating tracks of any significance but I have been told that I will have to go up North to see this. I have no idea on animal behavior in Sweden, and I shall try to read up on this before I venture off in to the unknown to track down a wolf or a bear. I would hate to track down a bear, only to find out that the bugger has got my scent, and decided to walk in a circle, to see what is following him. Buffalos do this. Can you imagine what the bear would smell when I get a nice warm breath on my backside as I am trying to figure out how fresh the track is that I am following? Hopefully this would put the bear off. Monkeys let rip when they come under threat, and I think that it is a good defense tactic. It smells bad, and it makes it very slippery for the animal that is chasing you. The downside of this is that I do my own laundry, so I will try my best not to get a bear’s breath on my backside…
Maybe I should start with the small furry little creatures, and work my way up the food-chain. Tracking a mouse or a shrew could be a good start. Maybe I will see a three-toed-elephant-shrew on a grasshopper kill. This way I will not end up on the front page of Dagens as some stupid idiot that stepped on a hibernating bear…
I shall try and read up on where bears hibernate. It would be very uncomfortable for both of us if I do manage to step on one. Kind of like a landmine that growls and eats you instead of going, BANG! In both cases, you would end up in pieces. With the bear, you would scream and stink. With the landmine, you would jump up in to the air with a loud scream and then proceed to scatter yourself over a sixty foot radius.
The next problem I might encounter is how do you distinguish a dog from a wolf? I have only seen photos of wolves, and I have seen huskies and malamutes for real. They do kind of look the same as wolves. I do not want to end up tracking someone’s dog, and taking hundreds of pictures of it, only to see it come up to me (me obviously very petrified at that stage) and lift its paw for a shake-and-play-dead trick. This will seriously ruin my bushman-of-the-wild image. It could also make the owner of the dog nervous.
Maybe I should just start with mice…