[imagesource: Richard Sowry / KNP]

Kruger National Park is a great place to see the Big Five.

It’s also a great place to jostle with 50 other vehicles for a look at them, especially during the school holidays.

There’s a reason a popular YouTube channel called Kruger Park Idiots exists.

I would guess that some of the rangers are enjoying the downtime, and so too are the animals, by the looks of things.

Here’s the BBC:

Park ranger Richard Sowry was out on patrol on Wednesday when he snapped a pride sleeping on a road which would normally be busy with tourists…

As a ranger in one of Africa’s largest game reserves, Mr Sowry performs an essential service and continues to work during the lockdown, checking on the wildlife and guarding against poachers.

Image: Richard Sowry

While driving near Orpen Rest Camp on Wednesday afternoon, he spotted the lions on the road ahead and pulled up just five metres (5.5 yards) away to look at the unusual phenomenon.

As he took photos with his mobile phone, the lions did not seem bothered, most of them apparently fast asleep.

Image: Richard Sowry

“Lions are used to people in vehicles,” he explained. “All animals have much more of an instinctive fear of people on foot, so if I had walked up they would never have allowed me to get so close.”

Yes, yes, we are the virus.

Just remember that whilst the Kruger Park animals remain protected, other reserves around southern Africa are seeing a huge spike in rhino poaching, at the very same time that the funds needed to protect them dry up.

Back to the Kruger, and some interesting scenes at the Skukuza Golf Club earlier in the week:

Even as the sun rises, without all our human visitors, the urge to sing the ‘lion sleeps tonight’ is just a whim away, a whim away, a whim away!
📸 ©️ Jean Rossouw; Skukuza Golf Club , Kruger National Park@SANParks pic.twitter.com/M9XiagVqjX

— Kruger National Park (@SANParksKNP) April 13, 2020

Last week, some wild dog was spotted in the same area:

pic.twitter.com/hZSlUjMsgx

— Kruger National Park (@SANParksKNP) April 10, 2020

Jean Rossouw is the course superintendent, or ‘greenskeeper’, responsible for watering and cutting the course grass during lockdown. I can think of worse gigs.

If you want to know more about his job, he outlined what an average day looks like in this Twitter thread.

I’ll just go back to staring out of the window and listening to the incessant cries of our resident hadeda.

[source:bbc]