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From Dr. Jeff's Camera Bag

It would be next to impossible to survive a 20+ year veterinary career without having a keen interest in animals and their behaviors! Away from Maplecrest Animal Hospital, another of my loves is photography. During the last two weeks of January 2002, I experienced the adventure of a lifetime for an "animal-loving photographer"... a safari to the east African countries of Uganda and Tanzania.

While in Uganda I visited three national parks. Mburo National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park were beautiful remote areas with varied terrain ranging from savannah grassland to gently rolling wooded areas. Both parks also contained beautiful lakes. Wildlife observations were great! For the first time in my life I saw, in their natural settings, elephants, hippos, various types of antelope, lions, leopards, chimpanzees, and hundreds of beautiful bird species.

I also visited Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. This park is situated in a mountainous, densely forested area of southwestern Uganda near the borders with Rwanda and the Congo. The mountains that these three countries share provide habitat for the last 600 surviving mountain gorillas on Earth.

For two days I joined a guide, several trackers, and 5 "fellow adventurers" as we hiked, tracked and finally located a different gorilla group on each day. At times the hiking was "comfortable." At other times we followed our guide up steep slopes after he had used his machete to create a path in the dense growth. Once found, we were allowed to spend one hour observing, photographing, listening to and enjoying the gorillas!

Next I traveled to Tanzania and visited two of the most amazing places on Earth! Ngorongoro Crater was the first stop. The crater is actually a caldera, a huge "sunken volcano top." An unbroken rim surrounds the crater floor 2000 feet below. The floor of Ngorongoro is over 100 square miles of varied terrain including a constant supply of fresh water. As a result of this diverse environment over 25,000 animals and birds call this place home. Wild animal viewing doesn't get any better than this! I saw lions, cheetahs, hyenas, black rhino, huge wild bull elephants, wildebeest, gazelles, buffalo, zebra, hippos, baboons, monkeys and birds, birds, birds. Ngorongora truly is a "land that time forgot."

The next destination was Serengeti National Park. I visited just the southern end of this 5000 square mile park. What a feeling to stand on the grassy plain and see no evidence of man between yourself and the mountains 40 miles away on the horizon. During the next three days, I saw thousands of wildebeest, zebra, gazelles, various antelope, along with buffalo, giraffe, elephant and of course the ever present predators that depend on the herbivores for their existence.

My last night on the Serengeti, Mother Nature gave me one more "experience of a lifetime." As I watched from the window of my bungalow, a magnificent male lion appeared out of the darkness and, standing 10' from me roared at the top of his lungs the most deafening, thunderous, awe-inspiring roar you can imagine. I will never forget that sound nor the feeling of his guttural vibrations hitting me in the chest like the beating of a bass drum!

Enjoy a few of my pictures. (I only exposed 35 rolls!) I hope to have some of them enlarged and hanging in the hospital soon.