The mother could not do anything to help. She was standing
and protecting her baby. Her baby was dying in front of her and the
hyenas had surrounded her, waiting in the bush, waiting for her baby to die.
(Hyenas do not eat live animals. They are scavengers. They
steal dead animals from lions, leopards, cheetahs, and so on.)
The baby giraffe, as you can see in the picture, still has the
placenta attached to her. I was taking these pictures and tears were
rolling down my face. This is life in the bush.
The next morning we drove into the bush and back to the mother and baby giraffe.
We got stuck in the mud going there.
You can see our safari car and the other emergency vehicle that came to pull us out of the mud.
By the time we got to the mother and baby,
the mother had left the area and the hyenas
were eating the baby.
We had 2 days of
continuous rain so the soil was very soft. Every day was a real
adventure getting wet, looking for animals to film. If it wasn't the
rains that detained us - it was the animals themselves that we wanted to
photograph.
The next day, instead
of the mud holding us up, we were held hostage by a herd of elephants for 3
hours. They blocked the road and we could not move. We were
surrounded. It felt like we were captured by them. One elephant came up to our
car and tried to put his trunk under the hood to turn our car over…
As you know, I love
danger. It was very exciting.
