Sudden Silence

    That eventful morning during my safari, as I was preparing breakfast over an open fire,  the jungle had been vividly alive with the diverse songs of birds, the resonant growls of the big cats patiently stalking their prey. With the furious snorting of warthogs as they diligently dug burrows with their tusks in order to hide their broods from feline and canine predators.  It had been infused with the restless rustle of leaves as millions of ants marched towards the termite mounds that they intended to make their own. Alive with the incessant rustle of diligent dung beetles patiently rolling their malodorous treasures towards their underground destinations.

     I was deliriously awash in nature's wonders. A mere stone’s-throw away from my camp, there had been the rhythmic clatter of a large black female rhino noisily brandishing its horn against a tree. There had been also the vigorous splashing of hippos in a nearby river, the distant caw of vultures chasing away a cheetah in order to steal its prey, and the chatter ad hoots of baboons. All had been profusely permeating the humid, jungle air.

     But suddenly, all went silent. It was if the animals had become aware of something unusual which they had all instinctively perceived. Then it happened. From all directions the animals began to move. A large black rat scurried by my foot. The recently-calm baboons began hurriedly descending from their trees and and scampering by.  A herd of elephants that had been wallowing in the mud a mile away suddenly stopped, and then ponderously began crossing the grassland, while the hippos hurriedly left the the nearby water and joined them.

     Strange how the entire animal population was heading in the same direction, west. Strange also how they all totally ignored me and one another as they hurriedly passed by. Both predators and prey, mortal enemies, in one vast roiling cloud of travelling beasts oblivious to everything else around them. Herds of wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles, and giraffes, all massed together side by side in a swirl of frantically pounding hooves and amidst brays and neighs, chirps and squawks, and growls, sending billowing clouds of dust into the hot humid Savannah air.

       Within the cacophony of this sudden pandemonium, were wild dogs and hyenas and lions, all totally ignoring one another in their frenetic effort to reach whatever it was that was beckoning them. Elephants trumpeted wildly but, never trampled nor gored anything that got in their way.

     For a long while, I stood in my camp watching dumbfounded. Not knowing whether to remain there as a spectator, or to join them. To my surprise, the instinct to do so was exceedingly strong. But my human reasoning prevented it. Instead, I jumped into my land rover and followed as the seemingly endless streams of animals from the adjacent areas kept converging into the savannah and merging with the rest.  I kept scanning the horizon behind us  with my binoculars  to see if anything threatening was approaching. Anything that would provide an explanation for this behavior.  But there was absolutely nothing unusual that I could detect. No approaching storm. No approaching fire. The vast herd had plunged down a hill adjacent to a winding river, halted at its banks, and stood staring silently at a grass-covered hill on the other side as if in great expectation.  Hyenas and wild dogs, baboons and leopards, wildebeests and lions. All side by side, as if in anticipation of some momentous event.

     I trained my binoculars on it. For a long while there was nothing. Then it happened. The grass on the hill began swaying then swirling in concentric circles. Yet there was no sign of a tornado or any other meteorological phenomenon such as a dark hovering cloud. Instead, the sky above the hill was clear blue interspersed with white billowing cumulous clouds. 

      Strange how the disturbance was not affecting the surrounding terrain but was totally focused on the hill's crest,  slowly and gently shifting back and forth. Then it began doing so faster, and faster, causing the watching animals to become agitated. Elephants trumpeted. Hyenas howled. Lions and leopards roared. Monkeys and baboons hooted. For some reason, I felt an almost irresistible compulsion to join in and to shout, but managed to control those urges and preserve my scientific professional dignity.  

    Then the wind, or whatever it was, finally  began swirling soil and dust on the hilltop's center until  it became tubular vertical blur. It went on unabated about five minutes, and then, as if  in response to some signal, it rapidly decelerated and stopped, causing the detritus to drop to the ground, and where there had only been nothing but tall grass before, there now stood two very unusual creatures. A resembling horses, but with yellow polka-dotted purple fur. They had flexible long necks were crimson manes, and large  pink oval eyes located high on their faces. 

     At first, they seemed totally unaware of anything other than one another. Then they began gazing in our direction with what seemed like intense curiosity. They began producing what resembled whistling sounds, and after briefly nuzzling one another and snorting several times, they bounded away into the tall-grassed savannah at the speed of cheetahs and were gone.

   Of course, I  as an evolutionist atheist, was profoundly stunned. Sure, new species were constantly being discovered, but they had always been assumed to have escaped human notice and had thus remained undetected.  So this definitely was not the acceptable manner that new species were supposed to emerge.  As I sat there pondering the phenomena, watching as all the animal silently began their journey back to their habitats, I gradually began to realize the profound significance of what I had just observed.

     A new species! Coming into existence right before my very eyes! Now what would I say when my colleagues discovered it and began proposing its evolutionary lineage? What could I say? I would be  severely ridiculed and professionally humiliated if i described what I had just seen. In fact, my mental sanity would very likely be questioned. 

     So I decided just to keep as silent as all the rest of the animals that had just been privileged to witness a direct creation of life by God.