Carrion My Wayward Son

On the rim with Felix the Cat
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By Grayson

The Ngorogoro Crater is packed with animals. As mom would put it, “it is a bowl of animals”. We started driving up to the rim at 8:00, the perfect time for seeing animals. When we reached the top, we stopped for a view over the whole crater. It was huge. The bad thing though was that we could not see any animals, only black specks in the distance.

The drive along the rim to the road down was long. Along the way, we looked for baboons (it was a perfect habitat), but did not see any. Felix, our driver/guide, said they were probably looking right at us, but were too camouflaged to be seen. Finally we reached the road down into the crater. We turned on to it and roared along through some light woodland area. In front of us, the green savannah of the Ngorogoro Crater lay.

Buff chasing lion
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The first animals we saw were wildebeest and zebras grazing. Pretty boring. I wanted to see the lions and cheetahs – the big cats! But, the Cape Buffalo grazing alongside the road were very cool. They were so big I thought they could smash a car (which they could). After taking some snapshots, we moved along down the road.

Zebras fighting were next. One zebra went crazy. He started “hee hawing” at another and chasing him. They then turned around and stood on their rear legs. This is a very funny sight, because zebras are not well made for standing on two legs only. They were very off-balanced. It was pretty funny.

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Cars on safari make a lot of dust because of the dusty roads. Off in the distance, we could see dust clouds forming in a large bunch. That usually meant there was something to go see. Felix sped the car off in that direction. When we got there, we found out what it was: four male lions stalking a buffalo herd. The four lions were all brothers. We could tell this by the way they greeted each other – one pressing its head against another. It started out with two lions on the side of the road nearest the buffalo, and the other two on the other side of the road. Lions are much bigger than I expected. Their manes are twice the size of their head (and their heads are pretty big, I should know, given my big head!).

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One of the lions crossed the road directly in front of us. It was amazing. You could see his muscles just bulging from his skin. The other lion nearby was not as muscular or ready for hunting. We called him “the Lazy Lion”. While his three brothers stalked prey, he lay down and napped.

We turned our attention to the other three. They were all in hunting mode and were staring straight at a baby buffalo. They got up and moved quickly through the grass. The lead male buffalo turned around and so did the rest of his herd. The buffalo talked quickly in buffalo language and decided what to do about the lions. There decision was this: they would attack the lions themselves!!! And so they charged right after the lions. You could see on the lions’ faces that they were not very happy. We had a perfect view because the hunt (buffalo to lion, that is) came right at us! Felix the Cat (mom named him this and it stuck) decided that it was time to leave for lunch. He said that a hunt could take up to three hours.

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Our lunch spot was a hippo pool (almost every park has a hippo pool). Above us, kites (a type of bird, if you do not know this), flew around going after people’s lunches. We were careful not to leave our food out. We ate quickly, and got back on the road to get back to the lion hunt. About half way there, we saw some more lions though. This time, a mother and her two cubs. They were farther off, though, and so we did not stay long. When we got back to where the hunt was going on, we found that the buffalo herd had moved very far away and that the lions were mostly sleeping. So, we went off in search of other animals. Going left around the salt lake, we went after a rumored rhino. We knew that it was a rhino, because another guide told us where it was supposed to be and we also saw the dust from other cars. Going down that road, we saw a jackal, more buffalo, and more zebra.

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And, then, a surprise: more lions. These lions were sitting up in a bunch of reeds, and were not doing much. We saw their last kill, which was across the road, but it was all bones.

After that, we kept looking for the rhino; we came to the spot where it was supposed to be. Another tourist in a different car pointed to where he thought it was. Where it was supposed to be, was about a mile or two away. Felix didn’t think there was any rhino. Neither did I.

The biggest hit of the day by far was the cheetah. Word came around through the Crater that two cheetah had been spotted on western side. Felix the Cat drove like mad to get over there. Then we saw the two cheetah alongside the road. They were strolling hum, dum, dum, down the road and minding their own business. Up ahead, there was a large pack of gazelle. We stayed and watched them for a long time. It was starting to get dark, so we decided to go. Abby wanted to stay a little longer, so we agreed to five more minutes. Suddenly, the cheetah started full-on sprinting. Watching a cheetah sprinting is amazing. They go so fast. The two broke apart, and started going after two separate gazelle. The gazelle pack was in chaos. They were trying to get away as fast as they could. But that was not fast enough. One of the gazelle had been sleeping, and had barely gotten up when one of the cheetah pounced on it. He pulled one of the legs of the gazelle out from under him, then mauled its stomach. The gazelle had barely hit the ground when the two cheetah started feasting. They had to eat as quickly as possible, because lions, hyenas, jackals, and vultures would soon come. The cheetah kill was probably my favorite thing on safari. My favorite park was the Ngorogoro Crater.