Video of the Day - February 20

Today's "photo" is actually a video. During my visit to South Africa in July of 2007, I had the pleasure to stay for 4 days at the Impodimo Lodge in the Madikwe Game Preserve located in the Northwest Province. This was a fantastic lodge that I’d recommend to anyone. The service was great and the surroundings were 5 star (certainly better than I deserve!). One of our great game drives brought us to a water hole that had been "staked out" by a lioness and her 3 yearling cubs. We watched with great interest as all of the prey animals (mostly zebra & wildebeest) kept their distance despite being eager to get a drink of water. We laughed as the lioness would start to stalk prey only to have the impatient cubs blow her cover by coming up to play with her or try to chase prey themselves. The video clip you see here was one of her better attempts to take down a wildebeest.



Later that same day we had the thrill of having 3 of the "Big 5" within 200 meters of our vehicle at the same time. The three were a group of elephants, the lion family and two white rhinos that wandered into the area. All of these animals maintained a respectful distance from the other two.