Digger and Gorgeous - Warthogs

In December 2005 we were in our office when the gardener, Sagaria came inside looking pretty worried. He informed us that he had heard dogs barking to the East of the offices. At SanWild we are all very aware of dogs barking as this could be signalling the presence of poachers in the reserve that use hunting dogs to kill warthog, impala and other wild animals. Immediately we used our office radio to call the rangers to inform them that barking dogs had been heard and that they should go and investigate and find out if anything was wrong.

Soon afterwards they called back to say that poachers indeed had been heard on one of the adjoining farms and that they were leaving the SanWild reserve and crossing over to the adjoining farm in a follow up operation. Andre was close by working and we contacted him to inform him that the rangers were active on a follow up operation. He stopped his work and joined them. For many hours they tracked the poachers. On the radio we could hear that Andre and the rangers had split up and that some of them had set an ambush to apprehend the poachers. The operation was successful and later that afternoon Andre and the rangers arrived with arrested poachers and four dead warthog females on the back of his vehicle. Three of the warthog females were young, but the largest one, clearly had babies. Milk flowing from her teats mixed in with her blood where she was lying on the back of Andre’s vehicle. This was a pretty sad site. The poor warthogs had many stab wounds, some of them had their ears torn off by the dogs and one had her entire face split by an axe. They must have suffered terribly before they were finally killed.

Andre was worried about the piglets whose mother had been killed and set off again along with Shadrack, Albert and Diston to try and find the piglets. When it finally got dark they still had not found the piglets and hope faded that they survived.

The next day we were too busy to get around to looking for them, but on the third day Andre, who was very troubled by the site of the dead warthog mother on the back of his vehicle, patrolled the immediate area in which the warthogs had been killed with his little dog, Hoppies. It was very hot and eventually the two of them retired to a shady spot to rest. Within minutes Andre heard some faint sounds coming through the bush and when he looked up, he saw the two very small piglets. They were coming in his direction and when he softly called, they both came running right up to him. When the first little one smelt Andre’s boot, he quickly turned around and ran away – this was not his mother! Fortunately both the piglets were very weak by now and it was quite easy for Andre and Hoppies to catch them. He arrived at our offices with the two piglets wrapped in his jacket, hiding behind the seat of his vehicle. I have not seen such joy on Andre’s face for quite a while and it was clear that he was relieved at finding the two little orphans.

Named Digger and Gorgeous, the two piglets have gone from strength to strength and soon they will be big enough to feed themselves. Initially they will be released into the antelope holding camp to learn to feed on their own from where they will be released to join all the other warthogs living free and safe from poachers in the SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary.