But the wait was worth it. With great company, a beautiful sunset, spectacular birdlife on Lake Tagalala, and lions roaring at one end of the lake while hyenas whooped at the other, I couldn't help feeling jealous of all the guests who enjoy fly camping without me.

I went out to the Kiba airstrip yesterday to receive some vegetable supplies, and was surprised to find a rather formidable welcome party for the plane. 



I suppose that to those of us who have travelled across continents in airplanes, a small, single-engine craft nimbly landing on the dirt slope we call the kiba airstrip may not be too exciting. These lions, however, seem quite impressed by the performance.

In the end, however, the lion's natural laziness overwhelmed the excitement of the plane landing and taking off, and guests debarking with a week's worth of vegetables for the camp. The pair never stirred from their shady haven. The new guests were quite chuffed to find their first Selous lions 30 second into their visit. 

Last year, I wrote a blog about anti-mosquito laser defense systems. It seemed like a bazaar, and overly-sophisticated malaria prevention strategy, but it shows promising results.

This year, researchers are taking a different approach. According to an article in The Washington Post, public health researchers are trying to tap into the hidden potential of your smelly socks as a means of capturing mosquitoes. A comparative field test is currently underway in Ifakara, a town just outside the Selous Game Reserve, to determine whether natural human foot odor, collected in used socks, creates a more potent attraction for mosquitoes than synthetic chemical odors. The final step in the process is to contaminate those socks with a fungus that kills mosquitoes before the malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum is ready to infect a new human host.

So forget laser defense and expensive prophylactics. It turns out your socks are more than the laundry attendant's worse nightmare, they're the mosquitoes' worse nightmare too.

Here in the Selous, a thousand dramas play out every day.  Some involve wild chases with lions and other big game, but more often the story involves a few smaller players.

Out on a game drive this morning, I came around a corner on the shore of Lake Tagalala and caught sight of a Great Egret, with a fish in its mouth.  Is this just another quick and easy meal?  With a Striated Heron and a croc nearby, and a wriggling fish to hold on to, the outcome was far from certain.









At 9:20, the moon was almost too bright to look at, but the edge of the earth's shadow was just beginning to creep across.

By 10:30, the bush had lost its usual full-moon glow, and the moon had taken on it's half-moon crescent shape.



At 11:30, just before the eclipse was completed, the surface of the moon was thrown into relief.  The hint of red from the shadows was supposedly caused by the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano.



A lion roaring completed the experience.

This is Jim. 
 

That's Jim's giant catfish.  Jim has been helping out at Kiba over the last few months but he's been working in the Selous for years.  During all the time Jim's been in the Selous, he's learned a thing or two about the Rufiji's catfish.  Every day, as soon as he finishes his lunch, Jim grabs his homemade rod, a couple of worms, and starts hauling fish out of the river.  A slow day means he can only fill five guys' bellies instead of ten.