SCARLET

On the 17^th December 2007 a young steenbok was collected from Stofberg in Mpumalanga Province with a broken front leg. Scarlet’s young life was shattered when she and her mother was found by a group of roadside construction workers. The men separated the month old fawn from her mother and when she struggled to get away from them in the thick, tall grass, they started kicking her viciously to try and kill her so that she could be eaten. Fortunately for Scarlet, the foreman saw what was taking place and he ran to her aid. The young South African foreman was extremely angry and could hardly contain his temper when he picked up the broken fawn. Her one front leg was dangling helplessly; badly broken. With knowledge that he gained on a 1^st aid course the foreman set the young animal’s leg with what he had in his 1^st aid kit and transported her to a nearby farm where he requested help from the owner. 

After arrival Scarlet was rerouted to SanWild’s vet that applied a cast. The young steenbok quickly adapted to living in a small enclosure with a duiker fawn as companion. On the 20^th January 2008 the splint and bandages was removed again. Sadly although the leg bones had grown together, it was quite skew. 

Initially when the cast was applied a steel pin could not be inserted to straighten the leg properly as the bone was shattered and broken in 3 places. Initially the biggest concern was that the blood supply to the lower portion of the dainty little front leg had been damaged and this could have resulted in the leg not growing on at all. In this case the young steenbok would have had to be put to sleep.

Fortunately with the dedicated post-operative treatment and intensive support of Rebecca, calcium was added to Scarlet’s daily feeds and the leg did attach and grew on. Only time would now determine to what extend the leg would rectify itself to determine if this young animal would recover sufficiently to be returned to the wild.

Unfortunately after a couple of weeks it was clear that the leg would not improve and in actual fact was getting worse. Scarlet was in obvious pain and discomfort. The very difficult decision to have another operation done was made early in March and Scarlet was driven more than 500km to the Farm Valley Veterinary Hospital in Pretoria where Dr. Hans van der Zee broke her leg again and aligned it correctly in a 1 hour 20 minute operation. After three weeks the young steenbok could place weight on her foot and our hopes of her making a full recovery increased substantially.

On the 20^th March the first two pins were removed leaving 2 more steel pins in her leg. The removal of the initial two pins allowed Scarlet to put more weight on the leg and allowed it to slowly strengthen while still having the support of the two outside pins. On the 23rd April 2008 the last two steel pins were finally removed from Scarlet's leg.

After an amazing 6 months and three operations, her leg has finally healed and set correctly so that she can be returned to the wild. Her eager little face behind a glass window watching the other young antelope playing and running free outside will always remain in my mind. She so badly wanted to join them, but her mangled leg and the steel pins simply did not allow any interaction with the other antelope for fear of her damaging her leg even further.

For 6 months she wanted to join them and now she was finally ready to join them. God has been so good to us with this little one and we can only thank Him for His grace. Thank you also to all the donors who donated generously to ensure that Scarlet got the expert veterinary and orthopaedic help she needed to regain use of her little leg.

Thanks to our WildKind vets, Dr. Gerrit Scheepers and Dr. Hans vd. Zee for your commitment, dedication and perseverance to help ensure Scarlet’s return to the wild.