Today was my first day’s trekking in the Simien Mountains and I’ve already met a few of the locals. First were the Gelada Baboons – highly decorative and most entertaining individuals.
The males look like miniature lions decked out for a bachelor party with fake breasts, while the females seem to spend most of their time grooming the males in return for sex. Seriously.
The males dutifully copulate several times an hour in order to stop the females nagging (which they do in high-pitched voices that sound like children who want mummy to buy them a sweet). Funnily enough, the males get highly annoyed and very vocal if they spot other, intruding males. (You’d think they’d be grateful for a bit of help.)
It’s an interesting society and you are able to observe it from flea-jump distance. Tourists can approach within one metre of individual baboons, who completely ignore you if you sit still enough. Whether they’ll sit still enough for you to photograph them is a different matter.
Another interesting character I met at lunch today, while munching a roll on the edge of a cliff, was a bird I immediately dubbed ‘The Snork’. Apparently its real name is the Thick-billed Raven, and it’s one of Ethiopia’s many endemics, very common in the Simiens. But I think my name is better. Inspired by its quite astonishing call, I composed a poem in its honour. If you are foolish enough to read on, I shall inflict it on you.
The song of the Simien Mountain Snork
Is part of an oink crossed with some of a squawk.
It could be a lion with ‘flu trying to roar
But it also resembles an old man’s snore.
If the Simien Mountain Snork could talk
He’d ask for your lunch of stale roll and pork,
But all he can do is oink/squawk/roar/snore
Then hop off a cliff, spread his wings, and soar.
