Critters: Lions, hippos and warthogs, oh my!

Hippos were a main wildlife attraction of our entire trip to Ethiopia; in fact, in the beginning stages of planning the trip, hippopotamus and injera were the main incentives for convincing the boys to embark on this adventure!   So of course we were all thrilled to see them! We took a lovely boat ride across Lake Awassa to see this giant and the rest of his/her(?) family.  There was a group of 6-10 of them near the Haile Resort.  A few nights later, we spotted one near the downtown shore, munching away on reeds (after we had exhausted our camera batteries on photographing birds; sorry!)

This is a dik-dik at the zoo on Sidist Kilo in Addis.  The zoo itself was pretty gruesome, but the boys did love petting this little guy, and he loved it, too!

We were pretty excited to walk up to this dude and pet him! Turns out that these tortoises are kept as pets all over the place. They are pretty awesome-looking, huh?

An Abyssinian "black" lion at the Born Free animal rescue park outside of Addis 

(they are a race of lions with black manes).  Our gracious guesthouse host Eyerusalem of Ababa's Villa took us there with some of her friends.  These felines looked a lot happier than the poor royal beasts in cages at the zoo.  

Hyenas abound in Ethiopia (particularly in legend and lore), and we could hear them at Common River, but only Dave saw an actual wild one cross the road in front of our car one night.  The boys and Em saw this baby at Born Free, who was oddly caged with a giant mastiff guard dog(?).  

The Natural History Museum in Addis has some rather bizarre taxidermied specimens of Ethiopian wildlife.  It was the perfect place to be during an afternoon rainstorm in the city, however.  

These gazelles live in the teeny-tiny protected area at the Abiata-Shala National Park, along with some warthog families who were too short to get a good photo of in all the tall grass.

And not to focus entirely on the charismatic megafauna, here are some endearing little creatures we found, too!

These colobus monkey families were in the fig trees at the Hawassa fish market.  The babies were frolicking as we left in the evening - does it get any cuter? (other than fuzzy baby donkeys, that is!)

  

These vervet monkeys are all over the lakeshore in Hawassa and are tame to the point of being a nuisance.  The one eating injera below was probably also the one that climbed up on the table in front of Dave, removed the spoon from the coffee cup and placed it on the saucer, and then ran off with cup!  Zenebe in particular found them unbearably hilarious!   A group of these guys were given some chat (a narcotic leaf people chew) in the parking lot, and antics ensued: sliding on windshields, munching car antenna, wrestling while dangling upside-down from a tree branch, and even - ahem - some behavior that prompted a review of how primate babies are made.   And since this post just became PG-13 anyway -- yes, that last photo is a Dave capturing some remarkable coloring!