{"id":794,"date":"2014-06-29T17:26:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-29T17:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=794"},"modified":"2014-06-30T21:15:27","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T21:15:27","slug":"keeping-score","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=794","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Score"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Zebras<\/a>

Zebras generally give us the rear view….something about being shy. Shy with black & white stripes?<\/p><\/div>\n

A safari is about keeping score–how many animals (or birds) have you seen?\u00a0 After 2 days, we are at 23 animals (70 birds) and counting, which we assume means we’re doing pretty well.\u00a0 Zebra, giraffe, elephant, warthog, wildebeest, gazelle, impala, ostrich and more.\u00a0 Of course it’s highly motivating to know how one’s doing.<\/p>\n

For many Safarians, it’s about The Big Five (lion, elephant, rhino, leopard, Cape buffalo). To enhance scorekeeping, our guides jokingly informed us of The Little Five (lion ant, elephant shrew, rhino beetle, leopard tortoise, buffalo weaver ) and The Ugly Five (warthog, wildebeest, marabou stork, rhino, vulture).\u00a0 We sort of keep score, but we don’t have a target score.\u00a0 We just like to SEE THINGS.<\/p>\n

\"Bird<\/a>

Bird or beast? The birders counted this ostrich as fowl; I went with big game.<\/p><\/div>\n

Which brings us to why you won’t get a daily sightings list or even cute animal pictures if you keep reading this blog.\u00a0 First, you probably don’t really care what animals we saw on Tuesday or Thursday.\u00a0 Second, you’ve seen lions and elephants in picture books and on Wild Kingdom, and my iPhone camera is no match for what you’ve already seen.\u00a0 If you feel cheated, here’s a website<\/a> for you.\u00a0 Third, we’re interested in\u00a0context, oddities, humor, the story behind the story, the stuff other people don’t tell you.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s what this blog is about.<\/p>\n

In that respect, we are very lucky with our choice of safari companies, Mark Thornton Safaris<\/a>, because there’s so much more to Africa–and to East Africa’s ecosystem–than big animals or birds, and our guides teach us constantly. \u00a0This sounds like a topic for a\u00a0future\u00a0post…..<\/p>\n

\"Elephant<\/a>

Elephant joke per our guide: What did the elephant say to the naked man? A: Hey, that’s cute, but can you breath through it?<\/p><\/div>\n

OK, that said, we’ll throw in some animal pictures just to prove we\u00a0really saw ’em!<\/p>\n

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\"We're<\/a>

We’re the only ones to have this African animal on our list–we identified it as the rare White-legged Schnauzer-Jackal<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A safari is about keeping score–how many animals (or birds) have you seen?\u00a0 After 2 days, we are at 23 animals (70 birds) and counting, which we assume means we’re doing pretty well.\u00a0 Zebra, giraffe, elephant, warthog, wildebeest, gazelle, impala, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,18,17,19],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fam-friend","tag-africa","tag-arusha","tag-safari","tag-thornton"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QqGi-cO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}