"Isn't it like being at the zoo?"

That's what people wonder sometimes about these national parks, where you can get so close to the animals and they seem, at first, so tame. Last weekend for example when Theresa and I visited Kidepo National Park -- Uganda's most remote, on the border of Sudan -- we took this picture of zebras from our porch, and there were also buffalos, hartbeest, oribi, water bucks, jackals, and the amusing warthogs grazing in the same grassland a short stone's throw from us.

There are constant reminders that these animals are still very wild, and still very much in a threatening environment. When the jackals wandered through the field, the water bucks -- who easily could kick the little animals across the savannah -- still watched them warily. When two male zebras got into a territorial dispute, they didn't care that they were in the shadow of a human resort: they galloped wildly after each other, biting and screaming; the pursued crashed into a tree and fell to the ground and the pursuer pounced on him. The buffalos snort at you meaningfully, and sometimes take a few steps in your direction, and whenever you walk up to the main lodge at night someone comes to accompany you. And most of all -- at night you are awakened by the sound of the deep, long, loud roars of the lions, sounding so very close you are glad you do have walls around you. That sound must send chills through all the rest of the animals.

The vultures overhead, the bones on the ground, the scars on the big male lion's forehead -- these animals are on their own, and nobody will be there at feeding time with a nice dependable meal. This isn't the Africa of 100 years ago, before the Great White Hunters and local poachers decimated the animal population. But it's not a peaceful little Queen Anne neighborhood, either. That's what makes it so wonderful.