A long way from Petaluma, the African bush bustles

I thought the following words would start a conversation. Instead they stop it.

“I went on an African safari a month ago.”

Whoever is listening smiles, nods politely and then their face goes blank. It’s as if I told them I just got back from walking on the moon and the view, well, it was incredible.

“I went on an African safari a month ago.” Unless you have done one of those, how do you respond? After all, this is Petaluma. Typically, the most aggressive animal behavior we see around here is the neighbor’s dog that barks at two in the morning. Wilderness is that lemon tree in the backyard. Isolation? Yep, we have that all right, when we put on the headphones. Do we have to watch out for animals on the road? You bet. Once I almost hit a turkey crossing Sonoma Mountain Parkway.

So how can I explain to someone in Petaluma Kruger National Park in South Africa? It’s 40 miles wide, 217 miles long with 1,180 miles of road. It has 2,000 lions, 3,500 rhinos, 7,000 giraffes, 15,000 elephants and 130,000 impalas. It’s 7,340 square miles. In other words, it ain’t no Helen Putnam Park.

How can I capture in a conversation the dread I felt when that African elephant emerged from the bushveld? He walked straight toward our suddenly-stopped tour vehicle. He was 20 feet away when I became curious.

“What do we do now, Clive?” I asked our tour guide.

“We keep backing up,” Clive said.

After about 200 feet of backspace, the elephant crossed the road to our right, to join another elephant in the bush. We had blocked its path. I have covered 22 Super Bowls for newspapers but nothing took my breath away like that.

Until I saw the kill.

It was a “night game drive.” Our tour vehicle had six spotlights, three on each side, manned by us tourists, scanning the bushveld.

We heard it before we saw it. We turned our spotlights in the direction of the roar-growl. No more than 40 feet away from us three lionesses and an adolescent male lion had surrounded a young Cape Buffalo. Its mother was trying to drive the lions away. If it had been a single lion, she would have been successful. But lions are not solitary creatures.

The young Cape Buffalo was still alive when the lions began eating. The mother gave up the fight. As she backed away, she moaned. I’ll never forget the moan, a hollow sound echoing through a canyon. To witness a live kill, we were told, is rare. Not sure if anyone in our vehicle felt that privileged. This wasn’t a National Geographic special when the camera shuts off as the feeding begins. This was nature in all its raw, elemental beauty.

On the left side of our tour vehicle were the lions. On the right side were the hyenas, waiting for the lions to finish. Felt like a human sandwich.

“No worries,” said James, our guide. “They aren’t interested in us.”

The lions saw metal, the frame of our vehicle. They didn’t see meat. Except for very specific areas in the Kruger - when you are allowed out of a tour vehicle with park rangers accompanying you with rifles - you stay seated. Don’t even dangle an arm outside the frame.

We turned a dusty corner and there, on the right side of the road, was a baboon, sitting, yawning, looking content and harmless until it opened its mouth. The teeth inside that square jaw could crack a coconut.

You don’t giggle when your tour guide tells you to close and lock all your windows at night when inside your guest house. Baboons will enter your room and they will not be cute and cuddly.

I wanted to apologize for the humans that act like animals. A woman laughed as she almost hit a crossing giraffe with her car. The giraffe wobbled. If the animal had fallen, it would have died, the blood vessels inside its head would have exploded, such is the blood pressure necessary for the heart to pump that blood all the way up that neck. Giraffes sleep sitting upright. They can’t lie down. Ever.

In a zoo the animals are there to entertain us. In The Kruger, you are their guest and you will be respectful and you will be alert and heaven help you if you aren’t. All your senses are aroused because life in the bush demands that they be so. No one on safari reaches for his hand-held device to relieve boredom.

On safari you will be awake in a way unlike ever before.

If you love animals, you’ll love them like you never did before.

Which is why I’ll probably never go to an American zoo again. I have seen magnificent animals live on their terms, not ours.

(Bob Padecky is a Petaluma resident. Email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.)