Smile and say “Rhino”

Much as I love animals, I don’t think I’ll ever make it to an African game park to bump around in a Range Rover looking at lions, and tigers, and wildebeests – oh, my!

Too far, too hot, too poor, too politically unstable. (Okay, it’s a big continent, but there is an awful lot of instability spread across it. Plus I just read Little Bee, about a Nigerian refugee in Britain…).

So it’s unlikely that I’ll be ordering up a bush hat and sunscreen anytime soon – make that ever. Which means I won’t be staying at the Aloe Ridge Hotel and Nature Reserve anytime soon, either. And I suspect that a lot of travelers, even those far more intrepid than I, are feeling the same way these days.

Not after the park owner doing the honors for a photo op for a couple of tourists suggested that they "stand just a little bit closer" to those handsome and photogenic rhinos. This is the before shot of Chantal Beyer and her beau.  Didn’t see the after shot, but it involves a goring, collapsed lung, and a couple of broken ribs.  And if South Africans are any where near as litigious as Americans, it will no doubt be Exhibit A in a law suit.

Oh, I’m sure – especially if South Africans are any where near as litigious as Americans – that this couple signed a legal te absolvo before heading out on a photo safari. Still…

What was owner/tour guide Alex Richter thinking when he:

…told a group of visitors to get out of their vehicle to take photos and even encouraged the rhinos to come closer with food. (Source: Huffington Post.)

(Here, rhino, rhino, rhino…)

Okay, I’m guilty of shoddy journalism here. I omitted the word “allegedly” before the word “told.” My bad. This is exactly how cyber-rumors get moving, how folks get convicted in the press, how conspiracy theorists whip themselves into a pet about how President Obama engineered the Newtown Massacre to further some nefarious personal agenda.

But even without “allegedly” fronting for “told”, I haven’t heard anyone contesting the fact the Richter was the shutterbug. and that he was the person in charge.

Ms. Beyer’s is 24, which should be old enough to know that a massive animal sporting a horn is not something you want to snuggle up to. But it’s understandable that she deferred to a wildlife expert. Her uncle was quoted as saying:

'There were quite a few young people on the vehicle and they probably felt they could trust Richter, who was an adult.'

Sheesh. Didn’t these young people ever hear that they’d be better off not trusting anyone over 30?

Meanwhile, Aloe Ridge is playing mum, and the rhino remains number three on the list of species “sighted at close range” that visitors have:

…the ideal opportunity to gameview from a custom built 14 seater open Landrover or any of our Game Vehicles and enjoy the fresh tranquillity of the bush.

Gored by a rhino is not my idea of fresh tranquility. Maybe fresh tranquillity means something else in Afrikaans.

Meanwhile, Aloe Ridge has been getting mixed reviews on Trip Advisor, with one advisor reporting that “baboons [are] running around and threatening to attack people.”

Not that I’d want to take on a baboon, but I’d take my chances bungling in the jungle with a baboon’s fangs before I’d turn my back on a bull rhino running with a sharply pointed object sharply pointed at me.

Gameview on!

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Today’s the 42nd anniversary of my father’s death, who never did and never would have let any of his kids end up gored by a rhino. Not that we had many/any rhinos in Main South Worcester. Just saying. (Still miss you, Dad!)