The Park

Posing with animals I'm sure at one point I've eaten

A man with a rifle stood in between me and the hippo, a thin layer of reeds unable to mask the heaving breathing of an oversized mammal.The Germans, when they came to Africa, called this animal Wasserpferd, water horse, attempting to place an existing name onto a mysterious new creature.

We are at Kasanka Park, a small national reserve noted for being the destination for a massive bat migration from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fruit bats arriving to feast on mangos and anything else sweet hanging from trees. At dusk they awake and swarm, a tornado of flying rats, fit for any comic book hero. We made the bat signal out of wood and set it aflame, a tribute to the migration and our pop culture upbringing.

I shot a video and this is it: