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this curious badger-like creature crossing my path. It seemed quite 
incapable of speed, and in fact this one made no attempt to escape 
from me but instead stood its ground and raised its fur. 
In captivity a few weeks later this specimen gave birth to a 
single baby, which she reared. If this is the usual number of young 
it signifies that the Crested Rat has few or no natural enemies, for 
it has insufficient speed or the means of defense to protect itself, 
and yet the place abounds with servals, civets, genets and leopards. 
It does not emit a stinking odor like the striped zorilla that occurs 
in the same locality, so one might well ask how such an animal 
survives in Africa, where one thing is forever preying upon an- 
other. 
A friend of mine, Raymond Hook, has suggested that it remains 
unmolested by predatory animals through its mimicry of the 
zorilla. Everything has a great respect for this animal, which 
drives away its enemies in the same manner as the skunk, and the 
Crested Rat does, in fact, adopt a similar attitude by arching up 
its fur when in danger, so this interesting explanation would ap- 
pear to be reasonable. 
One of the great attractions of this ravine was the trout-stocked 
stream that ran through it, for this occasionally provided me with 
a breakfast fit for the gods. A couple of hours’ work in the keen 
morning air created a prodigious appetite, so that breakfast on a 
trout, with its delicate earthy flavor, straight from the stream, was 
surely something to put one on top of the world. 
I had two willing codperators in the persons of Johnny Nimmo 
and Geoffrey Ferrand, who lived on adjoining farms. One day we 
set off in Nimmo’s car for Lake Elmenteita in the Rift Valley. 
This is a soda lake and is one of the homes of the beautiful Lesser 
Flamingo. Its waters are so strongly impregnated with soda that 
after wading in it a while one’s legs become quite white with the 
chemical deposit; in the dry season, when the lake shrinks, its 
shores are as white as snow. 
The sight of these flamingoes in their countless thousands is 
something impossible to describe. They are often so closely packed 
that, when disturbed, the outer ones often have to rise first before 
the inner ones can flap their wings. It is a mystery at first sight 
what such an army can live on, as there is nothing noticeable in 
