GIRAFFES 309 



ern Guaso Nyiro, we twice came on giraffes asleep. Both 

 were cows. One was standing erect among clumps of walt- 

 a-bit thorn, its eyes closed and head nodding, precisely like a 

 horse which is sleeping on its feet. Our party, walking in 

 plain sight, got within thirty yards before it waked ; and it 

 was so startled that it fairly gave a grotesque plunge as it 

 got under way. The other was also a solitary cow, which 

 we had stalked thinking it might be a bull. It was strolling 

 about, and at times thrust its head among the branches of 

 some tall acacia and stood motionless. When it finally 

 seemed to come to a permanent halt, Cuninghame said it 

 was asleep, and Colonel Roosevelt started toward it to see 

 how close he could get. Cuninghame and the gun-bearers 

 stayed a hundred yards behind. It was open ground, and 

 Colonel Roosevelt walked straight toward it. When about 

 forty yards off it looked drowsily at him. He stopped still, 

 and in a few moments it again closed its eyes and he walked 

 forward to within a dozen feet of it. It then waked up but 

 was not in the least frightened; it pouted its lips peevishly 

 at him, and, rearing, hit at him with one foreleg, but struck 

 short. The other men ran up, and all stood talking and 

 laughing a few paces from it while it looked sulkily at them. 

 The men kept under the branches of the tree so that it could 

 not charge them, as they did not wish to be forced to hurt 

 it. Finally they pelted it with sticks and clods of earth, and 

 it slowly withdrew, quite unconcerned. AH the giraffes in 

 this district were relatively tame, but no others let us get 

 within two hundred yards, and if they saw us they usually 

 ran long before we got within that distance. We do not 

 understand the sulky indifference to our presence shown by 

 this cow. 



