Oh the Gnumanity

Are you a motivated self starter?  Can you hit the ground running?  Are you willing to undertake long distance travel at short notice?  If so you may be a wildebeest.

Wildebeest are migratory animals.  In fact they seem to do nothing else literally from the moment they are born.  Five minutes after birth a baby wildebeest is able to run with the herd which is handy as the herd won't be waiting for the kids to grow up.  Basically the kids are spat out of the womb, land on their feet and trot off with all the other wildebeest.  All wildebeest (well all the female ones anyway) give birth at roughly the same time.  This is done largely to convenience predators.  For a period of two or three weeks all a lion or hyena has to do is lie on its back with its mouth open and a wildebeest baby is likely to drop into its mouth.

Those that survive join the herd which is moving off.  The southern Serengeti where the wildebeest are born is just about to run out of wildebeest supporting vegetation at exactly the same time as several hundred thousand wildebeest are added to the population.  Fortunately the wildebeest are nature's storm chasers (as well as being nature's idiots).  They head west and then north following the thunderstorms that promise rain and thus fresh grass sometimes moving in small groups, other times in scenery blanketing herds heading towards Lake Victoria.

Sometime around late May a wildebeests mind turns to sex.  For the record a wildebeest's mind goes something like this "food, food, food, food, sex, sex, food, food, food, food, food, food".  The males engage in vigorous and sometimes vicious dominance battles which are completely pointless since the females choose their mates rather than the other way round.  Nobody said wildebeest are smart.  In fact most learned people are prepared to admit that wildebeest are morons.  Or as we would say nowadays "special".

Several hundred thousand "special" wildebeest the females among them now pregnant push on towards Kenya.  By September they're spread across the northern Serengeti eyeing the Mara River which blocks them from Kenya.  Wildebeest are terrified of water.  Water means drowning, crocodiles and the ever present danger that their mascara might run.  Eventually wildebeest wind up stacked seventeen deep along the Mara banks.  Then, with a spot selected, there is an explosion and more than half a million wildebeest take their courage in their hooves and hit the river like a JATO assisted battering ram.  The crocodiles are waiting of course, this is their version of fresh grass after the rains.  Sometimes the wildebeest find a ford, sometimes they hit precipitous banks (they really are rather dumb) but whichever it is they're committed and they go for it.  Crocodiles take many, mud, loose footing, exhaustion, drowning and the like take many more but ultimately no amount of predators or terrain are going to stop two million hooves and one million horns from getting where they need to be.

Once across they pause to play a walk on role in Big Cat Diary and then they're off again.  Heading east now to the forest fringes of the Serengeti and then south again where the rains have returned to the area they were born (and they really were all born there).  They turn up to take advantage of the fresh grass and waterholes provided by the rains, give birth and then with incipient starvation threatening wander off again.

If you think your life is going in circles, if you seem to be stuck in the same routine, well maybe you're a wildebeest.  Pointer signs are a meaningless, repetitive life, an affinity for storms and the mockery of all other animals (except the warthog which is arguably dumber than you are).  Oh yes and occasionally getting eating by a crocodile.  If this sounds like you then you may be able to make money from a nature documentary.  You could call it "My Boring Life".