I have - and if you watch this video to the end you will be one of a small number of people who have heard one too.
A hoo is a sharp, distinctive owl-like call made by African wild dogs that have been separated from the pack. Members of the pack will return the hoo, enabling their mates to locate and re-unite with them. The call can be heard from up to four kilometres away.
During a visit to the Kruger Park in September 2021, my wife Shelley and I we were tracking a group of 3 African wild dogs (together with a small convoy of other cars) moving up the H4-2 towards Skukuza.
The trio had just been chased off an impala kill they had made by two large hyena (notice their bloodied faces and snouts). As we followed them, we heard what we thought was a car alarm going off. It was only when one of the dogs stopped in the road and lowered its head to make this very distinctive sound did we realise what in fact we had been hearing. Listen for the reply calls from the pack rest of the pack.
On hearing these the three dogs were able to locate the pack and quickly moved off the road to re-unite with them. What a surprising and special experience!
WE WATCHED A PYTHON SWALLOW A MONKEY
A few cars were parked on the verge of the H1-5 main road between the Olifants and Satara Rest Camps. This wasn’t out of the ordinary in South Africa’s premier game reserve – the Kruger National Park – on a typical sunny December morning in 2015.
We pulled up next to the parked cars ambivalently, expecting an animal of the herbivorous kind to appear. After a quick scan of the bush, we noticed some vervet monkeys chattering and jumping around on some fallen tree branches. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the sighting we had hoped for, we often had vervets in our garden back home in Kwa-Zulu Natal. But why did this particular troop have an audience?
We interrupted a woman through her open passenger window who was staring intently at the troop with binoculars. “Python”, she said, pointing towards the bottom of the tree, “it has caught a monkey”. We scrambled for our cameras to see if we could locate the great snake. With the help of the camera zoom, glinting scales on one of the thicker fallen branches emerged – it was an African rock python. In its coil, tufts of grey-brown fur appeared as the snake unwound. It was true, the python had caught a vervet and it was about to swallow it.
Watching the python’s jaws expand as it engulfed the lifeless mat of grey-brown fur was hard to watch, as amazing as this sighting was. It was even harder to watch the other monkey’s reactions. Many clearly seemed to be in distress, chattering relentlessly and running around the colossal constrictor as if in a blind panic. There is nothing like witnessing the reality of death, the fragility of life and the unpredictability of nature in the African bush. This is a sighting that we will never forget.
The leopard called duke and the ice-cream bet
My family and I have been avid Kruger-goers for the last 10 years now. We have travelled the park extensively, particularly the southern section, which is known for its abundance of wildlife. Well, most of it anyway. My mom, arguably the biggest Kruger fanatic amongst all of us, insists that Duke Road has one of the higher game densities in the park. Over the years, this insistence has been met with laughter and mockery.
Needless to say, we haven’t had much luck on Duke. It seems even the most common antelope in the park – impala – avoid Duke. But every year, without fail, my mom insists that there IS game there, and not just antelope, but animals of the feline variety – lions, leopards and cheetahs. She argues that she sees these animals on the incredibly popular animal tracker app, Latest Sightings. I might add that she is on the app every night.
So last year, we decided to up the ante. A bet was quickly concocted. If we didn’t see anything ‘rare’ on Duke in the week to follow, everyone betting against my mom owed her a King Cone from the Park Shop, and of course, a back massage. If history were to repeat itself and nothing was seen, the Duke-deniers would be getting an ice-cream of their own. Everyone – my dad, my brother, my sisters and my girlfriend – took this action without thinking twice. In their minds, they would be licking the melting chocolate off the cone in a matter of days.
I wasn’t convinced. Here’s the thing, my mom is almost always right, with everything. She had to be right about Duke eventually. There you have it, I was on Team Duke, despite my girlfriend telling me to get my wallet ready to folk out some serious ice-cream cash.
Days later I watched with absolute glee as we stumbled upon a traffic jam at the junction of Duke. A leopard was stored away in a tree right next to the road. Beautiful. However, as was ruthlessly pointed out, we were technically not on Duke. No ice-cream for us, although I would’ve made my peace with that as we had just seen a leopard.
The next day, we revisited the juncture of Duke in search for the leopard. It had been a pretty dry day, so it was a last resort. To our surprise, the leopard was there! Still not on Duke the Duke-deniers pointed out. Then something amazing happened…
We saw a baby elephant smile
The best sightings are those that are unexpected and caught in the act. While most of us, ourselves included, tend to look behind every moving tree, bush and sand mound in search of big cats, we often miss what’s hidden in plain sight. On this particular morning, we came across a small herd of elephants just north of Lower Sabie at the entrance of the Mlondozi loop – not an unusual sighting in the Kruger National Park.
As passers-by gradually moved off after a brief look at the majestic beasts, we were treated to a front row sighting of a mother elephant and her baby. Akin to an exploring toddler, the baby wobbled on unsure legs, moving between mom and nearby trees. The baby grasped dry branches, twirling them around with the gooey forceps of its trunk, only to slap them down into the dirt. It seemed that the baby was learning how to use its trunk by copying mom.
We must have watched the scene unravel for a good hour or two before the elephants meandered off into the bush. We are incredibly grateful to that elephant mom for letting us in, ever so briefly, into her world. More often than not, the best sightings are those that appear out of the mundane, and are hidden in plain sight.
I was charged by an elephant
It appeared to be a normal day as my family and I meandered in our Toyota Innova along the Gomondwane loop in the Kruger National Park. The route is shady, with relatively thick shrubs lining either side of the dirt road. We approached a stationary car, appearing to be watching a herd of elephants milling about in a clearing ahead, just off the road. Although the elephants appeared to be relaxed, they were still a little too close for comfort, and neither car was willing to risk spooking a charge.
After a long wait, we were joined by another car, who was not willing to wait that long. The car pulled off to our left and casually sauntered passed the herd of elephants, having the audacity to take a photograph on the way. The herd continued grazing, unperturbed. The car in front of us got braver, and decided to do the same thing. We watched in awe as the car moved hurriedly passed the herd and continued up the loop without so much as a blink.
We had now watched two cars move directly passed the elephants without reaction, who by this time had moved further into the bush. We decided that the elephants were relaxed enough and further enough into the bush to warrant a quick escape. The coast was clear. Deciding to film our ‘quick escape’ and get a passing shot of the majestic animals, I wound down my window and pressed record as we went passed the clearing.
A giant grey shape suddenly loomed on the screen of my camcorder as an elephant appeared out of nowhere in a full-frontal charge, bare metres away from my door. My brother put foot on the accelerator as screams of terror reverberated from inside the car. But the elephant halted at the last second – a mock charge. Rangers argue that the tell-tale signs of a mock charge are when an elephant flaps out its ears while charging, compared to a normal charge where the ears stay flat against the elephant’s head. Needless to say we didn’t exactly have time to speculate.
Seconds after the commotion, the screams of terror were replaced with swearwords of relief. Although we had taken precautions to guard against exactly this scenario, the African bush is always full of surprises, which is ironically exactly what keeps us coming back for more each year.
