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African Giant Millipede (Scaphiostreptus parilis acuticonus)

They come out in their thousands at certain times of the year. It is difficult to miss them on the road. I am sure that they must be a great food source for some of the smaller predators. When I grew up we were told that they could kill you with their sting.
That was an urban legend.

I think they squirt it when they are handled, full stop!

This is one:

We were at Satara one night & while sitting on our verandah having something light to eat our next door neighbour was having a wors(sausage) braai. They kept on feeding the birds while I was saying to my SO "I hope those birds ****(ilhavedam) in their plates when they eat. In the end I could'nt take it anymore & went over asking them politely to stop. They were off course very annoyed. As the guy turned the wors he shouted out loud " This is for the birds." We just ignored him but when the wors was ready & he took it off it all fell to the ground. We had to run inside as we ROFL.

At our first few visits to the Kruger, everytime we had an ellie that scared the heck out of us. The 3rd visit (may 2003) we were in Punda, driving the Mahony-loop as we always do there, very early, and Nico said, very relaxed, how much he was adapted to Kruger and said than: "I'am totally ready for it" (after several ellie attacks, Nico was ready for the next one). Within a minute or 2 a huge campervan came across us. We drove on, and than we heard something like a train, we looked back and a big elephant bull came after us, ears wide, trunk rolled up, and running so fast. We drove away as fast as we could, than Bullie went into the bush, and we wiped the sweat off our heads. Next moment he ran right through the bushes and off we went again. He repeated this several times, we never did the loop so fast. At the end we were far away enough, and we looked to eachother very releaved, and I was about to tell Nico that he was NEVER ever aloud to say that he was ready for anything in the Park, when we came around a turn in the dirtroad. Mind you it was still not completely light, and what we were seeing, both of us at the same time, was a baby ellie.
Nico stopped right away, and we both twisted our necks, to see where the rest of the herd was.
Than we looked in front of us again, and better this time. What we both had recognised as a baby ellie, was in real life
AN OLD GREY NYALA MALE, with his head hidden in the bushes As we past him, we laughed our heads off, and I admit, out of relief that was.
Till this day, every time were in the Park, at one moment or another, when we see the behind of a Nyala male coming out of a bush, either of us shouts: watch it, baby-ellie, and we still enjoy our stupidity.

This reminds me
Last year on the S28 in the early morning light i got very, very exited. I saw the rounded, yellow figure of pangolin approaching. Reaching for my camera, tried to keep it still and battling with my beanbag ready to shoot...

Only to see then that it was a helmeted guineafowl with its head down kicking up dust.

During our trip to Kruger last week we came across a beautiful young lion lying right next to the multi direction sign post at the T junction of the H4-1 and H1-1. He was lying with his paws within inches of the edge of the road and as usual there were several cars parked all around taking pics.
When along comes this sedan from the north with 2 occupants. We watched them as they got closer and closer to the lion and I was cringing thinking they must have been pretty close to running over his toes when they stopped, with his nose virtually right against the car door and believe it or not but they had no idea what everyone was looking at and were looking around with confused expressions!!
Eventually someone managed, with wild hand signals, to get the passenger to look down and he must have been nose to nose with the lion at that point. Well the look of shock on his face as the car shot backwards was something to see.
After they had got over the fright the embarrassment set in, much to everyones amusement.

Being an American who has grown up in southern Africa, I often cringe when I see American tourists in Africa and especially in Kruger...there have been countless times my family and I have exchanged agonized looks as Americans enthusiastically comment on the "little deers" they saw and once we even heard of a tiger sighting!

One really funny incident...at least I thought it funny at the time, was when we were staying in Skukuza one New Year's Eve. A group of Germans were camped quite close to our tent and at the stroke of midnight they began setting off firecrackers!! They woke us up and scared us silly!
Also camped quite close by was an Afrikaner family and they came out and complained...a shouting match ensued and the camp manager called. Me and my family lay in our tent listening to it all and trying to stifle all our giggling! Poor people...you just don't go to the park to do stuff like that!

After my uncle and I watched a successfull leopard hunt 10m away from us on the Mahonie loop he said to a bloke at the communal camping kitchen that he had seen a "tier"(tiger) catch something.

The oke replied: "'n tier oom? Dit moes baie spesiaal gewees het, eerste keer in 30jaar dat iemand 'n tier hier rond sien". (wonder who saw the last one?)
It must have been very special he said, first time in 30 years that someone had seen one around here (wonder who saw the last one?). And then he walked off without taking his washed dishes with.

We waitied for my dad to dust himself off 10mins later when he got up from ROTF. And we too moved off to have another oom ricky louw and coke. :

Fact is many elderly people call leopards "tiers" or "tiere" (tigers).

That's seriously weird, WTM — and a very funny story)

Yeah, it's still funny. Everytime my uncle and dad visits me, my dad tells everyone present the story. Those two brothers... best okes on earth.

I will move this now to funny experiences with other people. But lemme tell it first. On the same trip my uncle and I met up with two heavy weights... busy handing it to each other. These two ele's were moving our way on the road towards Kanniedood dam. We were trapped and I tried reversing whilst video taping them. My uncle navigates me. But he was terrified. W@H saw the video.

He tells me to shoot thru here... where "here" was the veld. He then tells me that the ele's was going to make "k@k" cause crap in other words. To which I think bymyself "Ya think?!?!"

Then I stoll the car... he then orders me to "f" forget the video camera as he does not want people to read in the news paper "old oom dies @ feet of elephant bull, whilst nephew records whole incident".

This incident is my dad's favourite of all time.

This reminds me of a story that goes back many years ago when we first started going to Kruger, and were towing a borrowed caravan behind our Ford Granada station wagon down a fairly narrow sand road en route to our next camping site. No chance of turning around or reversing.
Half way down this road we met this huge Bull Ellie marching down the centre of the road, well, we stop and wait, he carries on relentlessly and then at the critial point my SO turns to me and says in very serious voice, "start the video camera rolling, at least we can get a good picture of who did it for the insurance company"
Well, needlessly to say, he turned off just before us, intent on visiting his favourite watering hole but to this day, it is a family joke that is most likely going to carry on through the generations.

it's funny Elsa, my parents also had a Ford Granada, not a station wagon though, and we also drove on a narrow sand road, but uphill, only to come nose to nose with a big ellie. My dad reversed at a mean speed with the big dude flapping his ears and moving us along Did yours also have electric windows, which you learnt the hard way not to switch off the car when watching monkeys

Last week when we had "Brekkies" at Mholondozi, one of the Scots ladies ambled off to watch some bird on the ground next to our car, when another lady, also from England started a conversation with her. After a while our "Scot" lady (fag lady) came back to our table smiling. She told us that the lady from England asked her how long they are here for and wanted to know where they stay in Scotland. "Scot" lady proceeded to tell her where she was born and how come she lives in Scotland now. "Fag" lady told her she was born in Rhodesia (now Zim) and their mother got very ill and their father decided to send them to Scotland to his mother so she could look after them while their mother was in hospital. Their mother died a few months after they arrived in Scotland, so granny raised them, while their dad stayed behind in Zim.
The lady from England was quiet for a long time, looked at the Scot's lady and said:" You have lost your colour, because you lived in Scotland for such a long time, you are white now"