Life is good... so relax at Rhulani
Like all youngsters, they are unco-ordinated and it is amusing to watch them overbalance – often – as they play. It is interesting to think that in a few short months, they will become part of the bush’s most effective killing machine … a pack of wild dogs.
Chris Altenkirk, experienced ranger and general manager of Madikwe’s Rhulani Game Lodge, tells us that a wild dog pack will be successful in killing prey in four hunts out of five. This is compared to the two or three successes out of five which hunting lions manage to achieve.
This is because the dogs work as a team – and they share the spoils accordingly when they’re done.
As Chris tells us about the dogs, we sense a commotion and two adults join the third grown-up who has been watching the brood. There’s a strange, keening, whining, almost laughing sound from one of the adults.
All play is instantly stopped among the pups and they mob the adults.
Chris says the noise is the Alpha female (wild dogs are a matriarchal group) ordering the other adults to regurgitate meat they have eaten for the hungry youngsters. We watch as this most familial group of wild animals has breakfast, with the kids eating first.
It’s the closest I have been to wild dogs and the experience was well worth the early-ish start Chris suggested. We had got up at 4.30 and were on the road just after 5 heading for the wild dog den. Normally, early morning game drives in summer at Rhulani involve a 5am wakeup call, followed by tea, coffee and home-baked rusks and muffins be- fore the vehicles head out at 5.30.
Early starts in the bush are also worth the effort and we arrived late at the wild dog den because we stopped off en route to take in a group of jackal puppies who had just emerged from their den while their parents were off hunting. The jackals were curious and, I must admit, pretty cute.