Flashbacks

I was out at happy hour with the anthro crowd, and L began talking of the time we saw a newborn zebra baby-and I was like "Oh yeah! We DID see a newborn baby zebra!" Sadly I had honestly forgotten about it, and don't think I ever told anyone the story. So just in case I forget again, here it is:

We were out before sunrise, like every morning. It was around 4:30 in the morning and the beast (our jeep) rumbled along the dirt road scaring all the creatures that were a)beginning to stir 2)trying to find a nice place to escape another hot sunny day once the sun broke, off the road. L turned a corner (she always drove in the morning, I in the evening) and there were a herd of zebra in the middle of the road. This was not terribly uncommon, giraffe were the most common in the mornings (besides impala of course), but it was baby season and this herd had a very young zebra who was trying to get his legs to cooperate. He had been laying down when we first drove around the bend, and all of the adults had jumped up onto the steepish hill surrounding the road. However, this little one obviously hadn't had a chance to test out his jordan ups. He could tell he was supposed to follow, and his mother was baying for him to follow. Of course we had stopped at a reasonable distance and couldn't help but laugh at the foal who could jump straight up, but for the love of christ couldn't get himself up and over. He just kept ping-ponging up and down looking thoroughly confused as to how to get himself up over the ditch and over onto the hill at the same time. After roughly 15 minutes we were beginning to get a little worried that this stress was getting too much, for us and him, when he finally bounded up after his mother. We continued on to the sleeping site and hopped out just in time to see the babs running down the road we just drove up. A couple hours later we found ourselves at roughly the same spot the mornings hijinx had occur ed, and recounted the story and laughed to each other, because dammit after a few months, 10 hours a day with someone you each run out of stories, and eventually begin to retell a few (just a few :) A few hundred yards further up the road we can upon a zebra rub in the road (they rub in the dirt, a lot like horses do, you can tell from the hoof prints around the tussled spot usually) and a large bloody mass. It was totally a zebra placenta!! And being two hard stomached scientist types, you bet your ass we played with that thing for the better part of an hour.

Just another amazing experience that L and I shared. Glad she's around to remind me of them from time to time. Of course I am a total turd and don't have any pics of said baby zebra, so I thought I would throw one in of a zebra anyway.