The Ostrich Egg Omelet

Our morning hunt on the fith day was unsuccessful, we didn't even spot any animals. No jackals had come to our bait laid out the previous day. But the evening was when things got interesting!

We spent what must have been hours stalking oryx to shoot one for meat, with no luck, things seemed dismal. Yakub radioed Francis t bring over the truck, and we were happy to rest. Once again, there seemed to be no animals out... Until we rolled right by an Oryx just standing near the dirt road.

Yakub signaled to Francis to stop the truck, and placed the rifle on the pick up's railing.

"Take it," Yakub told Jason quietly.

The Oryx just seemed to look at us blankly until the shot went off. It fell down from the impact, then ran off. We all vaulted over the truck railing and ran after it, finding the Oryx lying dead only a few meters away from where it had been standing. Jason had delivered a perfect shot!

 We drove back to the lodge, and I was allowed to participate in the skinning. Which, surprisingly, is not as hard as it looks.

Yakub told the two of us that tomorrow we would go early to see if we could find any Jackals, since it would be our last day. But that evening, our plans were changed.

We hadn't been told this, but the owner's daughters were coming to the lodge due to the long weekend. They turned out to be a lot of fun, and we were asked to stay until Sunday at no extra charge!

The next morning we got up bright and early just as the sun began to rise. As we drove through the African bush, spotting giraffe and ostrich, it felt a lot like the beginning of The Lion King. Unfortunately, there were no Jackals to be found. But we did find an ostrich egg! 

It took a bit to convince the cook Anita to make me a lot of scrambled eggs, but they turned out delicious...

We sent the rest of the day with the owner's daughters swimming in a dam and constructing a giant raft out of rope and blow up pool toys -and getting some really gnarly sunburns all around.