In the lair of the mountain king

“Ziz was barely two meters away from me. Weighing around 220 kilos, he was enormous. It was touching to watch such a large and fearsome beast sweetly play games with his young, letting them climb on his back and roll down his belly. Occasionally, with breast-beats and grunts, he warded off his horny adjutants from his females. He paid no attention to us bald apes. Suddenly, he rose to his full height and beat his chest. I swallowed my heart....A handful of curious females came near and began examining me. Mtwali, an adolescent female, rolled onto her back and touched my knee with her hand. She then started fondling the lapel of my raincoat, then slowly reached up and touched my cheek. My heart soared. I was deeply flattered by her advances. Meanwhile, Effie, the group’s matriarch, who was helping a new mother wean her infant, glanced at me with dark, cognizant eyes. No other wild animal had ever looked at me with such presence of mind.”

“It was ten o’clock at night. The forest seethed with ceaseless nocturnal calls: crickets, frogs, and the occasional chimpanzee pan hoot. There was another sound, unusual for that time of night. It was coming from two different locations in a densely jungled ridge that rose from the boundary of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park on the opposite side of the valley from where we were situated. In the flickering light of a hurricane lamp, Jillian and I sat silently together on the veranda of “Weaver,” a luxury tent with wooden flooring, sipping iced Amarula and Makers’s Mark, respectively, and listening intently to the darkness. Again we heard the sound in the forested ridge opposite. To the untrained ear, it sounded like the panicked flapping of a giant bird, but we knew it to be two silverbacks one-upping each other with chest beats. The somnambulant silverbacks continued their aggravated exchange for an hour. What could have gotten them up at such a time when mountain gorillas are usually tucked up and asleep in their night nests?”