Chance Sighting
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 02:30PM 
The game drive started off unusually slow that late summer afternoon. We had attempted to track a pride of seven male lions, however as the sun began to set it became more evident that they had given us the slip. With the light fading Alfie (My Tracker) and I had decided that it was becoming too dangerous to track these lions in low light, so we resided to the fact that we would move out of the area and go in search of something else.
The drive progressed and we only had a few more minutes of game drive left, I took a well known road called Nyati drive (Nyati means Buffalo in Shangan) that lead back to the lodge. If there is one thing I have learned over the time I have been in Africa is that you can never know what to expect. When you least expect it something spectacular happens. This was one of those drives! It was along this road that we came across one of Africa’s rare mammals know as a pangolin.
A pangolin also known as a scaly anteater can be seen to be very similar to an Armadillo. Pangolins have large scales covering their skin and are the only mammals with this adaptation. They are found mostly in regions of Africa. These special animals are mainly nocturnal, and use their well-developed sense of smell to find insects very often in ant hills or termite mounds. Pangolins spend most of the daytime sleeping, curled up into a ball.
It was for this reason that we were all very excited to see this animal. Alfie who has spent his entire life in the bush had mentioned to the guests that, in fact the last one he had seen was 13 years earlier. We spent a long time sitting with it and waiting for it to move, finally it did. For those brief seconds it was well worth it. We ended the game drive on an all time high and it is most certainly a sighting that Alfie and I still talk about to this day. For more images click here.
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BBC Nature features some interesting information about the Pangolin! http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Pangolin
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