In my sophomore year of high school I and quite a number of my friends went to Yankari National Game Reserve. For those of you who have not been to this place, if you ever get the chance I would take it. Anyway, some of my friends and I were out walking around way too late at night for being around wild animals. We had seen a bunch of water bucks standing together and eating, or doing whatever they do at night, and we decided to be brave and walk over to them. They were not afraid of us at all, in fact one of them walked within arms reach of me which was pretty exciting and scary at the same time because these water bucks are not small and they have two very big horns. After hanging out with all the "8-points" we decided to move on and keep looking for animals... I had to pee. So I started over to the nearest tree away from everybody. When I had gotten about twenty yards away from the tree I was greeted by a large black animal. This animal jumped down out of the tree, faced me for a second, and then ran off into the darkness. My first thought was that it was a bear, but that idea was shot down quick when I remembered that we don't have bears in Africa. Then I realized that it was in fact a leopard. Needless to say I did not continue on my quest for a bathroom but I went back and convinced my friends that we should probably do the smart thing and call it a night. It was a very cool experience and thank God nothing bad happened. ... So what's another lesson we can learn from this? Well I have two... 1) If you let James Bowman drink a lot of water and follow him out into the bush there is no telling what animals you might see when he begins to take a leak. 2) Always, always, always check the shrubbery that you are about to pee on.
And yes, that is a water buck. Sorry I don't have a leopard picture... But google works well if you want.
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