WILD THINGS

By CHRIS BUNTING

May 2, 2006 -- ADOLPH is perched on a chair attached to the front of our green Land Cruiser like some deranged suicidal human hood ornament, at the mercy of all of the punishing rain, wind, cold – oh, and bloodthirsty beasts -- the bush can throw at him.

And yet, if you ask him, he’s got the best seat in the house.

See, Adolph’s job isn’t like mine or yours: He rejects the life-preserving instinct to run like hell from, say, the two lion brothers under a camel thorn tree we’ve just stumbled upon, opting instead to get as close as possible, taking the phrase “here kitty kitty” up a studly notch.

A highly-trained, eagle-eyed animal tracker riding exclusively with guests of Mateya (our five-star lodge), Adolph’s the sort of expert that women want to be with, and other trackers around Madikwe -- South Africa’s private, 185,000-acre game reserve -- want to be (and often rely on to uncover the spectacular critters hidden among the hills, rocks, brush and watering holes).

Lucky for the rest of us sitting in the jeep next to the lion duo, like ground meat in a big green can of Fancy Feast, Adolph knows what he’s doing.

Of course, these big cats, much like their domestic counterparts, are totally bored with us. Between mostly snores (they sleep 18 hours-a-day, lucky bastards), they finally roar — spectacularly from their entire bodies -- when they pick up the scent a sexed up lioness has sprayed on a nearby hibiscus, the trollop.

So we let nature take its course in private and move on. A voice on the CB radio indicates that there’s a leopard up a dead tree close by. We high-tail it over and indeed find the spotted cat batting around a branch like a kitten playing with yarn. Except her paws alone are larger than most kittens’ bodies; deadly and cute blended into one evolutionary masterpiece.

Just don’t kid yourself with that “safari means journey in Swahili” mumbo jumbo – it’s totally about the animals (who, wherever they are on the food chain, enjoy better lives than most humans in Africa). And like the rabid dorks armed with pencils that we are, we check off the animals on our list as we see ‘em. Zebras? Giraffes? Check. Impalas (the most graceful animals always end up becoming the ugliest cars)? Check. Southern Black Tit? Not yet, but I’m still looking, I keep telling my compadres.

Catching a glimpse of an elephant would give us the so-called “big five” (lions, leopards, buffalo and rhinos being the other four).

But there’s lots of downtime while out on safari between sightings, so lively conversation tends to bubble up. Ours ping-pongs between religion, tattoos, the new season of the Sopranos, and sexual hi-jinks on trains, planes and automobiles (“She chipped her tooth, how?”).

But once we stumble unexpectedly upon a herd of maybe a hundred elephants, everyone goes silent. Sakkie, our skilled and knowledgeable ranger/driver, explains in a sotto voce murmur that the animals that kill the most humans out here aren’t the predators, but the big herbivores like buffalo, rhino and, yes, elephants that’ll charge at you with all their tonnage when threatened. I’ve never trusted vegetarians, frankly.

So when we found ourselves in the middle of this pachyderm stampede, led by the Reserve’s infamous (their words) “alpha bitch” -- an extremely aggressive mother elephant whose war wounds include a chipped ivory tusk -- I knew Sakkie’s high-powered rifle, albeit capable of taking down maybe one bull with one or two well-placed head shots, was of little use if our jeep gets gang gored.

We could only park and sit silently in the bladder-leaking intensity (meanwhile, Adolph’s just chilling calmly in his chair), trying hard to not stare back into those giant bowling ball-sized elephant eyes that are looking us up and down.

Like the lions, they eventually lose interest in us (are we that boring?), move along down the road, and we were clear to breath again -- so we pull over and drank mass quantities of South African wine and beer between bites of jerky in celebration before trucking on.

The highlight of any safari, I don’t care how much of an animal loving, make-love-not-war hippie you are, is a kill. As the sun sets, the time was ripe for a slaughter. When we saw two lions begin to flank an unsuspecting wildebeest, we pull over and killed the jeep’s lights and the engine. Shining a red light into the darkness, Sakkie picked up the reflecting eyes of both the prey and its two crouching killers, which the dumb bovid doesn’t even know exist. The felines’ hit was on, and our bloodlust was high.

Unfortunately, right as one of the cats made its charge, some human jackass in a white Firebird (Jersey’s influence is far and wide) barreled down the dirt road and sent the spooked wildebeest fleeing before the cats could take it down. But lions, it might surprise you, are no strangers to failure – they only successfully kill one out of every 10 marks anyway.

Oh well, back at the ridiculously extravagant Mateya Lodge, it was time to hit the outdoor shower where I could have a macho moment reflecting on the day’s events, which, besides facing the world’s most dangerous animals, included helping to get our jeep unstuck from the mud, when…

“S#%$@T! There’s a freakin’ giant black millipede in my outdoor shower,” I silently scream in my head, so as not to announce to my female neighbors that I’m a wuss. The thing would almost be cute, peacefully curled up as it was, were it not for the fact that it’s one of those fat, nasty suckers you’ve seen in Nine Inch Nails videos or wrapped around a Playboy Playmate’s face on “Fear Factor.” So much for the shower (of course, the chicks also staying here had no problem showering alongside the serpentine monsters -- and letting me know so).

I had to settle on Plan B: Naked plunge pool diving in front of the plains, zebras and rhinos looking on (actually, that was Plan A all along)!

LOWDOWN

Stay: Mateya, recently visited by a certain NBA star and a few close posse pals, is easily the most luxurious lodge on the malaria-free Madikwe Reserve, occupying a private enclave in the Gabbro Hills. There are five very private thatched suites -- each decked out with mahogany furnishings, a personal pool, native artwork, soaking tub and a fireplace (it’s cold in the winter) – yet the staff approaches 100. Feast on the master chef’s sautéed Ostrich steak and Pandora’s Box dessert (chocolate, and then some) downstairs in the property’s underground, candle-lit wine cellar. Rates start from $1,158/couple/night; mateyasafari.com.