<p>My kids like <a href=“http://www.bored.com%5B/url%5D”>www.bored.com</a>. There are links to all kinds of interesting diversions, including <a href=“http://www.talkingonline.com%5B/url%5D”>www.talkingonline.com</a> (freak out your dog this way) and much more.</p>
<p>Just want to thank TD for posting the africam site with its live shot of nothing happening (at least while I was watching) at the watering hole. It reminded me of a rustic hotel/resort/safari camp we visited in Kenya that overlooked a largish watering hole. Part of the paperwork you had to fill out asked you to indicate whether you wanted to be woken up ---- at 3a.m., 4 a.m. 5 a.m. etc. — in the event that game animals showed up to drink. In other words, it wasn’t Disney World and no one was going to make the animals appear during cocktails on the veranda when it was most convenient. They may or may not show up at all despite the $200 a night you were paying to stay there. As jaded expats, we noted on the cards that they should wake us for the big game: lions, leopards, elephants, rhino, and giraffe. Zebra and gazelle were too common, easily seen in the city game park and sometimes grazing — like cows — on the side of the highway leading out of the city, to bother waking up for.
Love the bird sounds. Yikes, a new obsession is born.</p>
<p>I remember that routine jazzymom. Treetops? The ark? There was a particular kind of antelope (Bongo) that is very rare and we got woken up to see them. I’ve got the fuzzy pictures to prove it!</p>
<p>Wow. You saw the elusive bongo =-- the guide books always referred to it as the “elusive bongo” — in the wild. That is rare. We saw some bongo somewhere, but it was at a children’s zoo or something where they were in enclosures and thus not too elusive at the time. I don’t mean to engage in animal-viewing oneupmanship, but WE saw a bull elephant get into a head-rocking, trunk-swinging stare down with a water buffalo for the right to the best spot on the water’s edge. The wb backed off. Now that you’ve jogged my memory, it was The Ark in the Aberdare National forest. We went on a jeep safari the next day and followed a couple of female lions who were leading cubs down the dirt road we were driving on until one of the lionesses turned around, stopped and gave us a full open-mouth roar, followed by ominous low growling. Our jeep driver threw it into reverse, saying “she is telling us to keep away.” Wasn’t Africa great?</p>