Word: capes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that you ever planned to mess with a cape buffalo, but if you did, here's a thought: Don't-especially if the way you were going to do it was by picking on one of his kids...
...Cape buffalo aren't usually the stuff of news, but in the last month they've become the heroes of blogs, newsgroups and fan sites, ever since YouTube posted a video that may be the hottest upload in web history that doesn't include a naked famous person or a politician saying something career-ending. The 8-min., 23-sec. clip is a three-act play of attack, counterattack and rescue shot three summers ago in Kruger National Park in South Africa and posted only this May. Since then, it has been viewed more than 3.8 million times...
...smackdown took place at an ordinary watering hole where a small herd of cape buffalo were drinking and idling, wandering dangerously close to a pack of concealed lions that either did not smell very lion-like or, more probably, were crouching deliberately upwind. On the other side of the hole, six tourists and a guide watched in a parked range vehicle. The lions waited until the buffalo got close enough and then pounced, seizing the baby and scattering the adults. That's usually a game-ender for a baby buffalo, but things got even worse for this...
...What really surprised and delighted web viewers was the cavalry charge of the returning buffalos, who put themselves in the path of the predators to save the good-as-gone baby. Cape buffalo, after all, are not the MacArthur Fellows of the animal world. They're lumbering, quarrelsome and predictable in their movements and, says Houpt, "40% of them wind of them up in the belly of lions." But that means 60% don't, and the rescue that the Kruger group pulled off was actually nothing particularly special among herding species...
...million rides aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station may be fully booked through 2009, but the budget traveler still has options. Opening Memorial Day weekend is NASA's own space shuttle simulator at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Designed for the Holiday Inn crowd, the space tourist can get a decent sense of lift off and flight to low-earth orbit for $38 ($28 for children), less than the price of a typical theme park admission...