Brenda Muessel, age 11, of Norfolk, Nebraska, for her question:

What type of animal is a bongo?

Bongo is a busy word, sometimes loud and showy, sometimes shy and quiet. The noisy bongo is a merry drum, once made from the rusty, red wood of the bongo tree. The timid type bongo is a eertle antelope of Africa, where most of the world's antelopes prefer to live. He wears a rusty red coat with a fancy white pattern that blends with his dense equatorial forests.

African conservationists are trying to save the beauteous bongo from extinction. They hopefully set aside a sanctuary for him, but by this time he was too suspicious of mankind to trust even a helping hand. Not many outsiders have ever seen him and his remaining relatives never leave the canebrakes and misty rain forests on the high, tropical slopes.

Though he resembles a handsome deer, the bongo antelope is more closely related to the goats and cows. The male deer shed their antlers every year and often grow elaborately branched ones. The bongo wears hollow permanent horns with no branches  and the females wear them too. They are slightly curved and the male's may be up to 39 inches long.

The bongo's coat is vivid reddish brown with white chalk marks over his back and down his sides. Around his throat, he wears a white necklace shaped like a slim new moon. There are white patches on his dainty ankles and maybe some white hairs in the tassel at the tip of his donkey type tail. His sharp horns are tipped with yellow and tilted backward between his very large ears. His deer type face has a gentle, deer type expression.

The handsome fellow is a cud chewing vegetarian. Most likely he fills up with leaves and twigs during the early morning and evening. During the day, he stands or lies among the dense vegetation. Out in the open, his remarkable color scheme would be eye catching. There in the tall forest bamboos, it loses itself among the dark velvety shadows, penciled with stripes of bright sunlight.

All antelopes travel fast on their dainty hooves. The bongo stands four feet high at shoulder level and his bulky body enables him to push his way through the  densest thickets in his jungle. When in a hurry, he pushes through the undergrowth with his chin up and his horns pressed back on his shoulders. Nobody has had a chance to study their very secretive private lives. Naturally the cautious female is even more cautious when it comes to concealing her young.

For ages the beauteous bongo. was hunted by local tribes, who used his hollow horns to make ceremonial bugles and snuff boxes. He learned the hard way to fear all mankind. Hunters set snares to trap him because he can out distance an honest chase. However, when hound dogs are used to chase him, he turns at bay when he reaches a stream and this is fatal.