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I just read all these storıes to hubby and we were rollıng of laughter! Such a brıllıant topıc!

Last year we were at the end of our time in the park and were staying a couple of nights in Phalaborwa before flying home. We had been into town to get some groceries and came back parking the car under the shelter next to the home entrance door. We were just mooching around inside putting stuff away when No1's girlfriend (first trip to Africa and hadn't encountered vervets before) says completely unconcerned and deadpan: 'there's a monkey in the car.' She is looking through the clear glass in the kitchen door to our car outside. 'What!' says I, jumping to attention, the three of us ran to the door to join Sarah and heads together, peer out......
Sure enough, there is this one vervet monkey sitting up smartly in the drivers seat nonchalantly staring straight back at us as he munches on a rusk!!! The look he gave us was classic. Well, we just looked at each other and then went into total hysterics. The monkey wasn't worried at all! I was laughing so hard at the incongruity of it all that I had to go into the bedroom to compose myself so I could breathe and give my ribs a rest Now sort of under control I send the sons out the front door and around the side to shoo the vervet out of the car. 'But don't startle him too much', I don't want him pooing or weeing in the car on the way out the window!!!!!' So the boys give him the hurry up and the little blighter disappears up onto the roof with the WHOLE packet of rusks in one hand which when empty came floating down like a leaf from a tree

Here is another comical encounter that me and SO encountered in KNP. We were on our morning drive down the H1-3 from Satara to Tshokwane and stopped at Mazithi dam for a cup of coffee and rusks. I turned the bakkie with its nose towards the middle of the dam and both of us scanned the area for any animal movement.

I could here and through the bino’s see a few blou wildebeest snorting and mauling around on the eastern side of the dam. The next moment SO picked up nine (9) lionesses, walking behind each other on their way to the dam from a north-eastern direction. I grabbed the video cam and start filming their approach until they settled close to the dam in the long grass. This was for about 10 minutes. Me and SO was talking about what we see whilst I was busy filming at the same time and from the answers I received presumed that SO was busy taking photos of the pride!!

The next moment I heard sounds of anguish from SO and when I looked at her, she was still sitting with her bino’s in her hands uttering the words “I thought it was the camera”!!. Lucky for us the pride moves from behind the grass into the open again and SO could take the necessary pic’s she had missed the first time around.

Although it was comical after the fact, I was shocked when it happened. SO had major surgery done and was still recovering from it, when we left for our September KNP visit. It was our first visit to Biyamiti bush camp, where we will be staying for 4 nights in bungalow no 4.

It was a beautiful late afternoon when I started the fire for the braai. This is still one of those camps when it gets dark, it gets pitch dark. While we were waiting for the fire to subside, my neighbour was patrolling the area between his hut and the fence (about 25 meters apart). I detect that neighbour only had a small torch that he was using for sighting purposes at the fence.

We were still busy taking in the tranquillity of the bush camp, when neighbour come running towards us, asking me to come down to the fence with my spotlight. He did see something looking like a Hyena or leopard. It was really dark at this point in time.

Me and SO both jumped up and started to run towards the fence (me in front with the spotlight), shining back and forth to find our way. The next moment I heard a thud and when I shine the light back, SO was gone!!

The next thing I heard was SO’s voice at my feet, explaining that she tripped over a boulder in the ground. Needless to say, she was covered in dust and ground from head to toe. My first thought was her surgery and the injuries she sustain as a result of the fall. She however just dusted off around her face and told neighbour to hurry along. At the fence we were met by the most beautiful male leopard, busy hunting impala at a waterhole about 30 meters from where we were standing. It was only then that we realised that we did not take our camera with. When I got back the leopard was gone. We had a great laugh afterwards about her buying some land at Biyamiti.

The next morning I investigated the “boulder” that SO trip over and find it to be the only small stone protruding from a neatly raked area in front of our bungalow.

So we had always been to Kruger often when I was a younger kid with my Grandparents, but as my grandparents stopped going and our caravan got really old, we stopped going so often. So after a recent trip I decided I was going to buy a tent.

So with the tent bought my dad and I decide to try it out for a weekend, this was the 1st time in many years we had camped and the 1st time with just a tent. We arrived at skukuza and decided to set up camp, only to find that the ground was like a rock and our pegs just bent in the ground, unfortunately we didnt have a screw driver and the likes in the car. So my dad was off to the shop to see if we could get a screw driver or something along the lines.

We got stronger pegs but the still bent and it was out of season and we couldnt find another camper, so we bought to butter knives and hammered those into the ground to make holes for the pegs....

Needless to say we are now organized campers and have even made our own tent pegs

Was so nice reading all of these comical stories.......
With my son about a year or two old we visited Hluhluwe one year (yes I know its not SANPARKS, but comedy has no boundaries). Now.....during any given game reserve trip we are generally very very unfortunate when it comes to the large yellow cats. Don't know why, but we just don't seem to see them - jinxed with the sphinx or something. On a leisurely game drive we took a small one way cul-du-sac not far out of the Hluhluwe camp and would you believe it, there were two lionesses and two cubs right at the apex of the road around a tennis court sized turning circle. The lions seemed quite skittish but tolerated our close presence. Relaxing into the sighting (which we eagerly anticipated for years), it did not take long for one car, then two.....then a shopping mall parking area of cars to arrive. For a better view my son scrambled onto my lap and peered over the steering wheel. With a little kicking dance of excitement (like toddlers do) he felt it appropriate at that moment to express his delight by pressing down long, hard and deliberately on the hooter. Those poor lions got such a skrik.......they were out of there before you could say mieliepap
Now let me tell you that on that particular day.......if filthy looks were a disease.......I would still be chronically ill Best to say that untangling ourselves out of that traffic jam did not go down with polite smiles and courtesy......

Barry that was very funny!
Waterbuck I loved your story too!

Goodness, the bush does offer prospects for laughter.. often at our own expense.



A few years ago I ran the Skukuza half marathon. I had a packet of Nurofen in my car, a sugar coated anti-inflamitory.

I stopped at Berg n Dal and forgot an important lesson..

never leave your car windows open

As I walked away from my car, I heard a noise. A cheeky little vervet had dashed into my car, grabbed the tablets and was sitting just out of reach in the branches of a tree.

I was extremely worried. These tablets can cause kidney failure if too many are taken.

Ever tried negotiating with a vervet More than a couple of people stood open mouthed, as I tried to explain the danger to the little blighter.

He looked me in the eye, like a naughty kid and slowly opened the packet. No ways was I going to get his sweeties. He broke the covering and bit the tablet in half..

next thing I had a packet of Nurofen thrown at me. The monkey had a look, a grimace of total disgust on his face.

Have you ever tasted how bitter Nurofen is? There is a reason for the sugar coating.

Good lesson to that naughty Vervet Meandering Mouse! I can just imagine his face!

@ Waterbuck: My SO once wriggled and twisted himself into position to take a picture of the biggest Croc we've ever seen on the banks of the Letaba River, and in the process also pressed the hooter with his elbow! I nearly fainted, but you know what? It didn't seem that the Croc even heard it, because he didn't even move an eyelid! We had a bigger fright than him. Fortunately there were no other cars around.

Thanks for the stories Spargish, Waterbuck and MM .

MM, I am so happy that the vervet came second this time around . They can be really naughty .

I also have a hooter story

My children were still very young. I took them for a quick drive and stopped at Transport dam. They were a bit rowdy, so I gave them a on respect for others people's need for silence. I seemed to be surrounded by serious birders.

In order to keep them quiet and happy, I reached to back the back of the car to find some crisps for them to eat. Unfortunately my butt got jammed on the hooter and caused a sound like the trumpets of hell it took me a long time to disengage and my children were not making things easier. Their hysterical laughter just added to the ear splitting sound.

I slunk out of there so sheepishly, if a car could have a tail between its legs, mine did.

Sorry MM no rudeness intended but the visions I have in my head ROFL

Hi MM.......your Nerofen story jolted some memories back into place.......from way back from when I visited Botswana in grade 6. We were camping, somewhere between Maun and Kasane (or in Chobe) if I recall. We were regularly pestered by baboons and eventually we were the subject of a full blown raid. I can't even remember where the baboon got in, but the result was that he ran off a short distance to gloat at us with his stolen prize in hand, which happened to be a bottle of Eno's . Now, as for what happened thereafter.......not the kind of extraordinary nature scene you would see on National Geographic. That baboon opened that bottle with the greatest of dexterity and gulped down an eager mouth full of the dry Eno's. By this time we were already in stitches, anticipating the result (sorry I know it is cruel, but one does not choose the time at which laughter happens at the expense of an innocent being). With a look of complete wisdom, not wanting to break his pose, his mouth starting foaming. When his pose finally broke it was a spitting, head shaking affair and he took off at speed, in the way only a baboon can run when it is in a great hurry - hind quarters hunched up. I can only assume that he was either on his way to water or to get some solitude and space in which he could pluck up his pride again. At least he would not be suffereing from any indigestion.
It was incidentally on the same trip that we used a portable electric fence in certain areas as there was little in the way of formalized camping areas in those days. Looking back at it now, I can see it was very cruel, but watching the baboons carefully approaching the fence and slowly putting out a hand to "check the water" was a hoot when we were kids. We would watch from a distance and everything would go dead quit in the moments before contact ...............followed by a curdling YELP and a cacophony of birds and creatures raising the alarm from all directions as the poor baboon either made for the hills or dropped into a scrabbled pile on the ground with a look of utter bewilderment. Man I tell you......if I was the parent of those kids now I would surely teach 'em some manners and respect for the poor baboons