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thats sad... shame... my condolences to the family....

Article from NEWS24 : 6 Sept

Quote:

Phalaborwa - A hippo killed a man who was forced to wash in a river on Monday, apparently because the water supply to his village had been reduced to a trickle.

Thomas Ngobeni, 47, was bathing in a river in Lulekani near Phalaborwa in Limpopo when the animal attacked him shortly after midday.

Superintendent Moatshe Ngoepe of Mopani police said on Tuesday: "A huge hippo suddenly appeared from the water and clamped its jaws around Ngobeni's right leg."

Ngobeni shouted for help and loudly clapped his hands, drawing the attention of a passer-by.

"Amazingly, the hippo let go of the victim, possibly because of the noise and the appearance of the second man," said Ngoepe.

The passer-by helped Ngobeni out the water and carried him to a nearby road where he arranged for an ambulance to fetch him.

But, by the time paramedics arrived, the man was dead.

Council owes R87m for water

Residents have blamed BaPhalaborwa municipality for Ngobeni's death, saying that if there had been running water, he would not have to have bathed in the river.

"I think the man was forced to bath in the river because of shortage of water, because that's what we do when there is no water here," said Vende Mashele.

The water supply in the BaPhalaborwa municipal area has been reduced to a trickle because the council owes more than R87m to the local water board.

The council's in a Catch-22 situation, however, because it has struggled to collect payment from its residents.

Police have cautioned residents against hippos.

Although vegetarian, hippos are considered to be Africa's most-dangerous large game, and are reputed to kill more people every year than predators like lions or crocodiles.

Conservationists explain that hippo are extremely territorial, and protective of their young.

They also are short-sighted, and instinctively use their large jaws to chomp perceived threats.

We often stay in Hazyview. There are warnings about hippos everywhere. The warning usually says, "Be carefull of crocodiles, hippos and flying golfballs".
The one year we went a tourist was killed at the resort. It was a woman taking an evening stroll. It is difficult not to get blase. Last time we were there, the hippos were lazying in a pool a few metres from our chalet, looking ever so benign.

A family was driving on the N4 highway one evening when they collided head on with a hippo. The animal was killed instantly. The impact was so great that colddrink cans in the coolerbox inside the double cab bakkie burst. Hadn't it been for the size of the vehicle the family would have died. They got away with their lives but with serious injuries.

There are many cases of crocs and hippos taking humans in the Crocodile river on the Park's southern border. A huge 4m croc was once shot and on post mortem human remains including wrist watches was found inside its stomach. People's ignorance contributes to many hippo related fatal incidents. They are not the continent's highest ranked human killer for nothing.

A famous miss SA almost lost her leg in a hippo incident and still battles to get the wounds to heal after many months. A hippo can bite a croc in half.

A diver filming hippos under water was bitten in the leg a few years ago. The hole was big enough to push a 500ml glass colddrink bottle right through.

Every 2nd hair-raising story is about elephants but just for good measure, here is mine:

We were driving from Skukuza to Lower Sabie - a car full of girls. Suddenly, from the left side of the road came this huge elephant bull, obviously in full musth and at quite a speed. He had his amorous mind set on my little blue Honda. Now imagine this, I am driving - not the best and/or most confident driver on earth, having to contend with a car load of hysterical women. I stall the car twice and mercifully I start driving away and the elephant keeps coming. One person screams "go", the next person screams "reverse I want to take a pic!". And Mr Amorous keeps charging the car with impressive strides and huge flapping ears. Not certain what the noise inside the car is doing to the elephant's state of mind, I decide to drive faster than the speed limit just to get out of harm's way.

After a while we lost our suitor after we approach a bend in the road. Just then a medium sized bus approached from the front loaded with what appeared to be Japanese tourists. We try to flag them down to warn them of the possible danger behind us. But strangely they don't stop. Smiling, they all wave and greet as they drive past! I keep watching the bus in my rear view mirror and had to giggle when suddenly we spotted the bus' reverse lights come on and it started reversing full throttle with Mr Amorous close behind them! Poor dears, I wonder how far they had to flee the elephant in reverse......

Only vaguely scary story is not a NP story.

Hubbie, guide/poler and I were walking in the bush, in the delta sort of. (Not the best bit, we were on the wrong side of the vet fence). We saw a tail. Lion 200 metres away. We stopped. Our guide had his hat, we had binoculars, so we were welll armed. The lions stopped and looked straight at us. We stared at them and they stared at us. I was about to get scared, when I realised that our guide was very excited. He borrowed a pair of binoculars. He had never seen lion in that area. Eventually the lion started walking again, heading towards the Lechwe we had just seen. It was a great bush experience.

.....being charged by a big cranky bulll elephant
.....being charged by 2 rhino
....fishing in the crocodile river, then realising the whole group of hippos on the opposite bank are suddenly surfacing this side
....then realising an elephant had tip-toed right behind you too, it's footprints as evidence
...walking over a small bridge onto an island where, just a few weeks before a croc had snatched a man while fishing.
....turning the Opel corsa round and then realising I had done right under an elephants nose.
...driving down some sand road near Shingwedzi, coming to a dead end on this not so great road and coming face to face with a huge herd of buffalo.

On year in Letaba (Dec. 2001) we tried to see lions feasting on a Buff about 10m from the road (S95) behind a mopanie shrub. Unfortunately a Kombi parked halfway in the veld and blocked the view. They stayed there the whole day to take pictures.

Just before gate closing time they tried to leave and found the kombi stuck in the sand. I drove off to Letaba and informed the roadside assist guy. He asked me to help him and the 2 bakkies drove off in the failing light.

We tried to get the Kombi connected to the tow in bakkie, but everytime we got out, the agitated lions charged. If you ever experienced stress, this is it! In the end I had to try to block the lions off while the assistance oke tied the Kombi to the vehicle. Luckilly I drive a 4x4, or I might have become stuck as well.

This took a while and it was fairly dark when we got the Kombi out. It was towed +- 100m and then the kombi had to be untied. (This time without lions charging).

It all ended with a leasurely drive to camp after dark.

The ladies in the Kombi walked passed me in the camp and never even said thanks!

Something else that happened, did luckily not happen to me.

In Dec 1997 we saw a pride of 14 lions in the road on the S1 from Pretoriuskop to Skukuza. The car in front of us stopped and switched off the engine. As the engine was off, the electric windows did not work. A lioness sniffed at a guy sitting at the back, and he could not close his window. After sniffing him for a few seconds, she lost interest and walked off.

We saw him in Skukuza and he was still shaking!

My most hair-raising experiences, all in Kruger, in chronological order..

Firstly, on the Wolhuter Trail in 2000. We had been sat by the fire for the first two nights, listening to Lions roaring about a km away. They didn't move until the final night, gradually getting closer & closer, louder & louder. My mom & I were sharing a hut, which happened to be the end one by the fence to where the Lions appeared.
Now, anyone who's been to the Wol'ter camp will know that the fence is (was?) not really a fence. And although we were safe enough in our hut, the sheer & immense wall of noise of a pride proudly proclaiming itself to the world it knows but 2 metres from your bed evokes primal fears within our human psyche rarely tapped into.

Just over 24 hours later, we left Bergendal first thing. We were the first out of the gate & went right down the dirt road, down the dip into the dry riverbed &, just over the rise, we came head to head with a p ****d off ele bull. I was driving, I was only on my learner's and this guy was on top of us before I could finish saying 'oh look, elephant'.
I don't remember how I reacted, I just know that I did. We reversed for about 200 metres back down the track, down into the riverbed and back up the otherside with an uncomprehendable lump of grey matter charging flat-out with his head but 1m from our bonnet...
He blew off some steam by pushing over 3 or 4 trees. We turned around & promptly left the park...i think our nerves were warmed up ready for the drive back into joburg.

Lastly, a more beautiful yet still hair-raising experience. On the Napi trail last year it was a full moon & so the animals were very vocal. Leopard, Lion, Hyena, Jackal, Rhino, Nightjar, Owls of all shape and size, all calling for hours & hours on end.
The Rhino were worried about the proximity of the Lions by the way...there was a calf that we'd seen on the walk that morning.
Full moon, wilderness all around & an orchestra of the most stunning sounds composed by nature itself.

This one happened in Malelane Camp 1999....
May month, park was very quiet empty, and we were the only people booked into Malelane the two nights to camp....

The gate at Malelane camp is low, and the fence is still a normal 4 ftr with three strands barbed wire... the first evening, all was quiet, but at times was woken by distintictive leopard sawing in the near vicinity.
In the morning, the tracks of a leopard were in the sand by the gate... inside the camp!! We decided to stay, having camped in Mana Pools, Chobe etc. Just a little worried, though.
Well, ok .. next night.. at about 20h00, i hear impala blowing in alarm up the access road. I put spotlight up road, see mpala scatter, and a leopard walking up road, to no more than 20M from where i am near the gate... then walks into the bush parallel to fence where our tent were. From there the leopard crouched and watched us. My wife went to put our girls into the car for safety. As she came to join me, a civet cat ran along the outside fence line... i nearly died ... seeing more spots in my torch vision!! Before i could recover, the leopard growled and charged the civet, taking it not more than 5 m from where we were standing by our tent, just with the fence between us.
Only the next day would the staff believe us when we showed them the leopard spoor and blood.
Where did we sleep that night...?? In one of the HUTS that were open, and unoccupied!
PS: I often wonder how the story would have ended but for the arrival of Mr. Civet???

Eish
A leopard and civet in one night.
I don't blame you for changing accommodation. People often talk of the fear fullness of the lion roar, but to me the sawing of the leopard is more chilling.
Though, I must say, the first time I heard the sawing of a leopard was in Impie rutting season. It could not compete with an Impie ram on a mission.
Rutting Impies break sound barriers.

My first time staying in a tent in the park was a memorable one. We had been going to the park since I was five, but I was about 11 when we first camped there. We were staying in Skukuza and I remember the first night, my sister and I were wide awake...there was a storm off in the distance and the wind was quite strong. We lay listening to hyenas occasionally howling and eventually drifted off to sleep. Around midnight I awoke and really needed the restroom. My sister did too, so we cautiously picked our way out of the tent and towards the restrooms. We had to pass a dense area of vegetation to get there and as we approached, we could hear a menacing growl.
We hightailed it back to the tent in a hurry! We waited until it was unbearable and then roused Mom to accompany us. We cautiously made our way once again and sure enough, we could hear the growling. We paused and then ran as fast as we could to the bathrooms and back. It was much to our embarrassment the next morning that we found a small tent pitched behind the bush, still emanating those growls! Turns out, the rest of the man's family were in another tent on the other side of their vehicle!

I've got lots of stories to tell...

One night we were staying in Talamathi and decided to go on the nightdrive...it was in a bakkie rather than one of those trucks. We set out and saw all the usual stuff...a couple hyena. We stretched our legs in a clearing for sundowners and then meandered back towards camp.
Along the way, we came across a group of about nine lion cubs all huddled together by the side of the road and all various ages. We assumed that their mothers had left them in order to hunt, so we proceeded onwards a little more slowly.

Sure enough, about 40 meters up the road we came across some lionesses walking ahead of us, parallel to the road. Now, I was sitting in the very back on the right, and my Dad in the middle next to me. The lionesses were all (so we thought) on the left up ahead and the flashlights were all pointed that way. As I was craning my head to look, I heard an almost imperceptible sound on my right, I turned to look and right there, below me and about 2 meters away was another lioness who had been about to cross the road to join the others!
My stomach doing flip-flops, I froze in place and then slowly leaned against Dad and took his hand. He saw it too and froze. The lioness's eyes were locked right onto me and I could see them in the faint light thrown back from the headlights. Eventually -after what seemed like forever! the ranger turned around, saw the lioness and shone the torch on her...then she backed off and I relaxed. Talk about feeling helpless and vulnerable...when a lion locks eyes with you, you never forget it!