got charged by a black rhino whilst on a safari walk in South Africa. I'll copy and paste what I wrote on Facebook after the event.
day two of our safari tour, and we started with an early morning bush walk. the first 95% of the walk was very uneventful, and we spotted hippos in the distance, dung beetles doing their thing, jackals, zebras and impalas.
whilst nearing our vehicles for our return journey, we saw a rhino in the background. it was less than 30 metres away. what ensued was a tense ten minute session of actively avoiding it, being silent, actively avoiding it again, being silent, then avoiding it some more, getting charged by the rhino, having the ranger fire his rifle as a warning shot (after having the first round jammed, clearing the jam, chambering in another round, falling down and having the rhino come up to within three metres of him), everyone making a hasty retreat towards the Land Cruisers, and having the same rhino outflank us and almost charging us whilst we were in the Land Cruiser.
as if having our safari/accommodation/day tour cancelled on us initially from a bankrupt company wasn't a good enough story to tell our grandchildren, we've been given this gem. win bloody win.
we're fine, although Jasmine did take a fall from being pushed from behind by people who were panicking and running. all up, we're fine. what an experience!
in other news, we asked the ranger if this has ever happened to him. he said that he's been in situations with elephants, lions and buffalo. now, he's got a rhino to add to his collection of close animal encounters. four of the big five, although the leopard probably isn't the sort of creature that will charge anybody.
edit: we found out later that the rhino that charged us is named Zulu. Zulu is a black rhino, and has had a history of being rather antagonistic with humans. apparently, a previous ranger had tried to shoot a tranquilizer at Zulu, and it clipped him in the ear. we also found out from another ranger that he had a "selfie" taken with Zulu (by selfie, I really mean Zulu was about twenty metres away, and said ranger was..... at the bottom left hand corner). another group that had done the morning bush walk the following day did not encounter Zulu, although their rangers reckoned that Zulu was actually tracking them when the walk entered Zulu's territory.
many discussions ensued from this encounter, and we came to the conclusion that where we were walking was in the direct path of Zulu trying to get to the watering hole. since Zulu thought we were clearly threatening his only access to water, he decided to be antagonistic.... which resulted in our experience.
long story short? don't piss a black rhino off!
