Taylor’s Dam sits close enough to camp that you can hear it from the deck on a still evening. It is not a place I have ever associated with buffalo. For years, the large herd have kept their distance, grazing and drinking at pans deeper in the southern parts of the reserve. So when we found fresh tracks on the drive and realised where they were heading, I told my guests to hold on.
We arrived first. The buffalo were not here yet, but the dam was already occupied. A crocodile lay motionless in the shallows, barely distinguishable from the mud, utterly still in the way that only crocodiles and very old secrets can be. We sat with it, watching, waiting for the herd to crest the ridge south of the dam.
Then the buffalo came. Not a few stragglers, but a proper herd — 300 strong — filling the water in that unhurried way of animals who have been walking all day. Through my binoculars, I watched the crocodile. It had not moved. Not visibly. But something had changed in the water.
The attack, when it came, was faster than any of us expected. The crocodile launched. A full-grown male buffalo, all 800kg of him, was suddenly locked in jaws that had been waiting since the first animal appeared on the hill. My guests and I went silent. For a few seconds, the outcome was genuinely uncertain.
He got away. And returned to drinking, seemingly unbothered by the whole thing.
The herd drank on. The crocodile retreated into the middle of the dam. Taylor’s Dam settled back into its golden afternoon quiet, carrying the weight of what it had just shown us.
Right beside camp. Never stop paying attention.
0 Comments
on When Taylor’s Dam Held Its Breath