Lions, aardvark and a black rhino

The last two days have been great - we went out to change the water for some of the animals, which is a little tricky of course with the lions. We have to be quick with sweeping out the water from the basins that fortunately are near the gate. Naturally, Andre doesn’t have the volunteers do this part, but we keep watch to see when the lions start coming over and stalking him. Once the basin is clean, we attach the hose to the water tank in the truck and then fill it up. Later on we cleaned out the basins that are in the open for any of the animals to drink, and on the way there, we stopped along the way to fill in the aardvark holes in the roads.

There must be 1000 aardvarks and pangolins here, judging from all their digging! There was one huge hole that was large enough for several warthogs to sleep in, right in the middle of the road.

While we were doing this, who should appear but Bliksen, the black rhino that is now out on his own. So we get into the truck, and he comes up to the front of the truck and starts pushing with his horn. So I start backing up and he starts lumbering after us. It was really quite something – really just inquisitive. Claudia, the volunteer from Germany got an incredible video of this. Finally I stopped suddenly which seemed to spook him a bit, so he went off to the side of the road and just looked at us before wandering off. It was really a pretty exciting morning.

Another wonderful game drive

Andre took us on another wonderful game drive, specifically to look for the elephants, which we came across as they were crossing the road. So we watched them for about 15 minutes and it was great to see that we weren’t upsetting them because they continued feeding, milling about, and we had a good look at the tiny one who they pretty much try to keep in the middle of the herd. We were about 50 feet from them. We continued back to camp and lo and behold we saw a leopard who was standing in the tall grass, before she turned around and went into the busy. What an exciting afternoon!

Louise brought down a baby porcupine that she has been raising at her house. She named him Spike and apparently someone found him when he was tiny, by the side of the road with no mother around, so he brought her to Louise. He’s about 10 inches tall now, with his quills. When porcupines get agitated they start shaking their tail which has a rattle in it, much like a rattle snake and stomps his foot as well. Porcupines don’t throw their quills but when they need to protect themselves, they quickly walk or run into the enemy and turning sideways so the quills make contact. He’s really adorable. When he went into his temporary enclosure at the rehab centre here, he finally had dirt beneath him. So after he walked around the perimeter, marking his territory, he dug himself a nice hole and slept in it all day. He’s nocturnal and loves corn on the cob. He will be let out around the office compound in a few days to start getting familiar with the bigger world.

Paradise and an injured steenbok fawn

I can’t believe that my three weeks is starting to wind down. I will truly miss this paradise, the wonderful fresh air, majestic scenery, animals and of course everyone here who care so much about these lovely creatures. Every night has been a cacophony of frogs and this morning there were at least 50 in the pool. The pool was going to be drained today anyway to be painted, so all the frogs were taken out and were relocated them to Tonga’s dam. I couldn’t believe how relatively quiet it was the next night, so we certainly didn’t miss them.

Louise received a call from a farmer about 3 hours away who had rescued a two-month-old steenbok with a broken front leg caused by local road workers who had tried to kill it for food. Since some of Louise’s friends were coming here from Jo’burg, she asked them to swing by and pick it up. Fortunately the tiny animal had been well splinted, so it had been stabilized well. I actually helped Louise and the vet hold her before she was sedated, assist with the x-rays, and just held her head even though she was sedated. Not all vets are as caring as this one is with wild animals. He molded a piece of plastic into a sophisticated splint, which went from her hoof all the way up to her shoulder, and wrapped the leg. The good thing was that it was a front leg and the break wasn’t at a joint, but the bad news was that it was a three-way fracture. She will have this on for 8 weeks and should do well providing she keeps her strength up and starts eating. In a few days she will go in a pen with a tiny duiker that Louise is taking care of at her house and that will have a calming effect on the little steenbok.

Amazing surgeries at SanWild

It’s amazing what type of surgeries they have encountered here. One day Louise showed me some of the pictures documenting the medical treatment she’s administered. She has had zebras, ostriches and Zak, the hartebeest who all recovered from broken legs. One of the ostriches, Sunny, who is always outside the office, swallowed a thorn branch, which they had to remove from her neck. You can still see the faint long scar going down her neck. Some of the wild dogs who were caged before coming here, had been so terrified when approached by humans that they actually scraped off the ends of their noses which all got infected. When Louise rescued them, she took them to a vet who did their nasal reconstruction. They all recovered, and you can see one wild dog who doesn’t have a nose but is fine. In fact, when this one was recovering from the surgery, the other wild dogs would strip off pieces of the meat and actually feed her until she could do it herself. These animals have an incredible social structure, which makes them so special. Another example was one of the leopards that had been trapped had broken off her canines while trying to get out of the trap, which is a common situation when they are caged. Stainless steel canines were implanted and she is fine. This is just a few of some of the situations that SanWild comes across. The vets never know what to expect when Louise calls in with an emergency!

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