It turns out that
wildebeests are gnus, and
gnus are wildebeests,

great, hairy African antelopes
resembling muscular cows with
curved horns, but wearing bushy
beards and manes accenting their
charcoal-striped outfits that
collectively makes a wildebeest
a gnu. And vice versa.

That improbable combination
of body parts prompted a
wordsmithing actor* to coin
a new collective noun,
making news of a group of gnus—

an implausibility of gnus.

Before that, they traveled simply
as herds, but now the largest of all
antelopes carries a clever appellation
for these wandering vegetarians
of the Serengeti.

More than a million of them join
hundreds of thousands of other
ungulates in the planet’s largest
migration from plains to savannah.

Look at them go: the zebras,
the gazelles, the wildebeests.
And look at what stalks them:
hyenas, lions, crocodiles.

Not all of them will make it.

So much wildlife on the move
that the great columns of gnus
can be seen from space, a stream
of migrants compelled to make
their way over the sea of desert
on a well-traveled route from
one territory to, with luck,
a place where the convoy
can land—

in a stomping ground that
feels something like home.

•••

* The wordsmithing actor/television writer/author who coined the collective noun “an implausibility of gnus” was James Lipton in his delightful book, “An Exaltation of Larks.” It contains more than a thousand collective nouns, some of which Lipton invented. Lipton was perhaps best known as the dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York, and the creator and host of the television series, “Inside the Actors Studio.” He died in 2020 at age 93.