Up Close and Personal – by Ellen

As well as Evan ‘bonding’ with the Matebele ants, there was plenty of opportunity to get close to the wildlife. Particularly during the walks we were able to take time appreciating the little things that you’d miss as you drove past on the way to the lions. (There were also a number of creatures that we – thankfully – missed when driving: Karongwe was nearly short a few millepedes, a beautiful big chameleon and a giant African land snail to name a few.) We picked up the dung beetles, wrapped our hands around them and felt their incredible strength as they prised out fingers apart and pushed their way out. We poked grass stems down holes to tempt out the occupants – scorpions from the oval holes and big Baboon Spiders from the large round holes. We tasted the sour plums and marula fruits, and licked leaves from base to tip to determine whether or not they were hairy, and if so how hairy.
Much of the time the wildlife came to us. As we crashed through the undergrowth we de-housed ants, praying mantises, grasshoppers, kite spiders, green octopus spiders and the huge (and that’s ‘huge’ coming from someone who’s not scared of spiders, and therefore not prone to spider size exaggeration syndrome!) orb web spiders, which all relocated to the inside of the Landy. The lucky person on the tracker seat bore the brunt of the spider webs, and they were often seen doing the ‘spider dance’ – a highly choreographed series of arm flaps and head shakes, often accompanied by shrieks and squeals - as great long trails of thick sticky web trailed from their hair.

At one point while Evan was driving he became so concerned that there might by a Huge Spider somewhere near him, that suddenly steering wasn’t overly important. I may have screamed at him a little bit has he drove the front on the Land Rover, with me clinging on to the tracker seat on the front of it, off the track and into the Cork Bush. Something tells me that was revenge for the Matabele Ant incident.