Harry's Tales: Hopping Mad And Noah's Day
Harry Wroth encounters hopping seeds in Kruger Park.
It was a very hot day and we were thirsty. We were approaching the western end of the loop road west of Shingwedzi. We had had been watching for two hours a pride of lions lying about under shady bushes. There was no activity of note, so we decided we would return to them later in the afternoon.
On the southern bank of the causeway there were some dozen unfamiliar largish trees. As we crossed the causeway we could see to our right at about 500 metres a family of elephants, a few giraffes and a pair of buffalo. We pulled in under one the trees. The shade was a Godsend.
We had no sooner stopped than we thought we were experiencing a hail storm. However the sky was cloudless and there was no wind.
Consternation and bewilderment, then awe.
What we were witnessing and hearing was seeds, falling from a tree, then hopping about on the ground and on our car.
My sister opened her door and reached down to grab one of these seeds'. She held it in her open palm, but it wriggled and jumped out of her hand. The seed' storm continued all the time we were parked under the tree. There was no similar activity under the other trees.
The seeds' were pale-straw in colour, about one centimetre in diameter. There were thousands of them.
A few evenings later, when we booked in at Punda Maria Camp, there was a bowl of these seeds on the reception counter. They were jumping about. A Parks official told us they were Tamboti tree seeds. A small wriggling worm inside one of the seed's three compartments was the cause of the surprising movement. It served as a natural seed dispersal mechanism.
We went back to view the lion pride, but no activity, so we moved on. We planned to take the western gravel road loop to Babalala to enjoy our breakfast there on the following morning. Before dawn at Shingwedzi camp a heavy thunderstorm broke. Rain came down in torrents. A few kilometres out of camp we saw a young man, dressed in a tracksuit, unarmed, running back to Shingwedzi camp. A few hundred metres further on, in an off-road parking area there was a big Mercedes Benz car, bogged down to its axles in the mud.
Alarm signal number one. We turned off the tarred road onto the gravel loop road. It was still pouring with rain. Weslowly progressed along this loop for about four kilometres. All the little gullies crossing the road gushed with streams of water. These got deeper and faster flowing as progressed. We realised we were in danger of, so turned around and headed back to Shingwedzi for bacon, eggs, tomato and toast.
We ate a hearty breakfast, then rain abated somewhat, so off we went. We were predominately a bird watching group. We hadstopped to watch a kingfisher when suddenly we saw a two metre high wall of water advancing down the Kanniedood Dam. There was no broken water, merely a gentle smooth rise in the level, a sinister, silent, fast rush of possible death.
We moved downstream, keeping ahead of the wall of water. We thought the dam would take hours to fill. We were wrong. The bed of the Shingwedzi river is about 300 metres. There are numerous sandbanks,with reeds, bushes and trees scattered about.
Fish in the pools some fifty metres ahead of the wave were jumping out of the water. Some were temporarily stranded on the sandbanks. Crocodiles rushed to higher ground. Leopards, cheetah, lions and other cats and animals were flushed from the riverbed .
We were witnessing a spectacle we were never likely to see again. We were indeed privileged
