mmmmm bacon sandwiches & yummy scrambled eggs for breakfast ~ great start to the day !!
As I have said it’s different on the weekend, a list of chores & who is doing them is put up before the weekend, if you are not on the list you have the day free & don’t even have to attend the morning meeting, however , as I had nothing else to do I went along & was very happy I did.
N/a’an ku se deal with ~ specialise in ~ Human/Animal Conflict & have such a good reputation that they regularly get phone calls from the public & they also work very closely with all willing farmers.
The work with farmers is mainly carnivore related, if for example a leopard starts hanging around & the farmer is worried about his livestock, he can call up N/a’an ku se & they will trap the leopard, collar & track it, they provide the farmer with daily readings to show the leopards movements, more often than not the animal is not a threat to his livestock, as that is not the natural prey of healthy carnivores, an example of this is that Stuart has a camera trap picture of two cows drinking at one at end of a trough, whilst a leopard drinks at the other ~ they do not interact or even look at each other !! In the meantime, N/a’an ku se work with the farmer, showing ways to secure his live stock, such as cutting blackthorn bush & using it as a natural barrier between carnivore & livestock. If however evidence comes in that the leopard is in fact causing the problem, N/a’an ku se will re-trap the leopard & remove it from the situation !!
ANYWAY ~ at the Sunday morning meeting we find that a call has come in from a lady with a porcupine problem, they were coming into her garden at Windhoek to eat the wild bird food she was leaving out & she was worried that they would hurt her dogs or children, she had managed to trap one of the younger ones & Simon & Abraham was going to collect it & wanted three volunteers to go along. Camilla asked for volunteers & four of us stepped forward, she chose three ~ based on answering questions about porcupine, but ending up as rock, paper, scissors lol
Lucky enough to be picked, I had to get my passport as we would go through police controls & off we set. Simon is a lovely young man, very chatty & nice to be with.
We arrived at the house, the lady, her three daughters & two little dogs were very nice & excited. The porcupine was in a room which just had a bed base in, which is where he had decided to hide. King of the animals Abraham, smoothly maneuvered the little guy into the cage we brought & off we went.
We left the little guy in the shade over lunchtime, he munched the FIVE apples we left him with & at 3pm we took him down to the pan to release (video clip on Instagram & Facebook) the cage was opened & he ambled off to a nearby bush ~ being a nocturnal species, he wasn’t going to go far just yet, so we left him to settle in !! A very satisfying experience on a Sunday !!
The rest of the day was a lay day, lunch was coated chicken, roast veg, wedges & ice cream !! Diner was a cheese & meat buffet followed by jelly, custard & tinned fruit !!
The Lapa was full of noisy kids on the evening, so went back to the tent at 7pm. Heavy rain & thunder again from teatime
The Wildlife Volunteer 