Our morning chore was Primate Antics ~ taking the baby baboons for their walk. I got lot’s of footage of Shrinky the brain damaged baboon who lives with the babies. Whilst out on the walk, Abraham got a call to say that some tourists had booked a baboon experience & we had to change direction to go & meet them. It must be like a scene out of a movie as you stand in a desert & see people with baboons on their shoulders & running around them coming towards you !!
It turned out that the tourists were the couple I had met at The Lodge when I spent the night. They thoroughly enjoyed the experience as did we, I don’t think you could ever tire of taking these cheeky little critters out for a walk, watching their personalities & have them willingly interact with you – it is a complete pleasure & one I dearly miss!!
After lunch we had a Game Census with Charlie, she is soooo funny & happy & in love with her job. We set out on the back of the truck, Charlie gets excited about EVERYTHING & she has spent some time with someone who I think she said was an animal tracker & this person had taught her that it is just as important to LOOK at the road as it is to look into the desert ~ so as we are driving along, Charlie comes to a stop, she has noticed paw prints on the road, she was VERY excited thinking she could have discovered leopard prints, she sent pictures to Shauna, who informed us it was actually hyena prints which was both equally exciting & a little disappointing. When it rains in the evening the night watch team to a game drive rather than a sleep out, the other night this happened & Charlie did the drive, she was SUPER hyped that they found an aardvark ~ her joy at such things is infectious !!
We saw many kinds of antelope & some zebra, some beautiful birds, warthogs & the ostrich family, there are nine ‘babies’ though I guess they are more teenagers ~ very tall & brown. Last year the ostrich parents lost their babies ~ they had mysteriously drowned in a trough, this years children are way past the size of even fitting in a trough, so hopefully they will go on to have children of their own!!
We drove past investor houses & a new 7* lodge being built by an investor who stumped up alot of money to a farmer who was going to sell some of the land that had been loaned to the farm, he named a figure which he thought Marlice & Ruddy could never stump up, as he was going to sell the land to developers & it would have been ruined, lucky this amazing person stepped in (an acquaintance of Angelina Jolie) to save the day & secure the homes of all these animals !!
The Wildlife Volunteer 