I had just gotten to another fabulous safari lodge in Botswana. I walked to the room (my bags had already been brought there by the hosts), washed my face from the dusty, hot ride from the airstrip (filled with lots of animal sightings, of course!), and decided to spend a few minutes on the back deck of the room which had an expansive view of the surrounding area.
Out in the distance, I saw a group of red lechwe. They were just grazing in a group, with no immediate cares in the world (although they always have the terrifying immediate need of not getting eaten by lions or leopards or whatever else). One of them looked up at me from the distance, and I wanted to try to communicate with it.
But what would I do? I obviously don’t speak “red lechwe.” I didn’t want to shout something at it, either, since that wouldn’t be how to communicate to it as much as scare the heck out of it. And I certainly didn’t want to do that.
So I did the first thing that popped into my head. I bowed toward it. It didn’t like that. It spit in my direction (granted, it was probably 75 yards from me at least, so the spit didn’t get anywhere close to me), and then it ran at full speed to the side about 25 yards, stopped, and stared at me. I laughed inside to myself. I decided to try it again, and again bowed towards him. He once again spit towards me, ran back the other way, stopped, and stared again.
At that point, I decided I didn’t want to disrupt its day anymore, and left it alone. I did feel that I had succeeded in communicating with another species, if only for a few seconds and in a very, very strange exchange.
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