Chewbaaka, courses, new visitors... Update from Laurie

Remember the four-day game guard course I reported last week? I have included a group shot of them with Gail Potgieter (all the way on the right, on one knee). What a great group they were!

Chewbaaka is not doing very well today. He has been very dehydrated all day – he got 4 liters of sub-Q fluids during the day and all his meds. He did eat ~800 gr meat and liver but only moved once today into the grass and stayed there during the day; there was no rain so fortunately it was a nice day. Ah, tomorrow is another day.

The workups on the three Scars went fine; all of them are looking very good. The are now 2-years old and we were able to collect sperm from them; it was pretty good from all three; however, Tony was the best!

The international course participants really enjoyed learning today. Each of three groups worked on the cheetahs with us, the other rotating groups included learning how to wash scat and make slides from the prey hair that was in the scat and then to analyse the slides under the microscope. We hope that each group will make their own hair libraries back in their countries and be collecting scat and analysing it. The third group also learned how to use GPS (Global Position Systems) and began to learn about GIS (Global Information Systems) for mapping and spatial analysis.

We have two new animals that have moved into our areas. In our back yard where Chewbaaka lives, there is a rare black mongoose that has just appeared and is now living in our yard. I had never seen one before in all the years here in Namibia (or throughout Africa) -–will let you know more about it; it seems to like us. Then down at the Hot Spot (our communal dining area) lately at dinner time there is an aardwolf that just is out in the field in front of the dinner tables and it is does not seem to care that there are about 40 people right near it!

Life here never ceases to amaze me.

Laurie