June 7th. Today we
had road clearing again. I was up by 6:45 and we left around 7:30. We worked
until about 10, and it was nice and warm, unlike yesterday. It’s good in a way,
because it would be miserable to be freezing when you try to chop wood. But on
the other hand, when you are sweating, you kinda miss the cold. Regardless, it
was a beautiful clear day, with the most gorgeous open sky. I feel like I have
gotten a little more accustomed to bush clearing now, I mean, this is my fourth
week of practice! I can use clippers, machete, handsaw, and panga like a pro!
:) Of course, it’s all fun and games until a knobthorn comes down on you and
attacks one arm in two places and both your legs at the same time! Joy! Haha.
We got home around 10:10, but it was too early for lunch. So we took a short break
for a snack/coffee and then we went to get a load of sand for the volleyball
court before lunch. I helped to load, unload, and spread the sand with the guys
and the two new rangers, while the other girls were wonderful and made
everyone’s lunch! When we got done, they had made “toasties” (aka grilled
cheese sandwiches) and warmed up the leftover veggie curry from last night. We
all ate and chilled for a bit, and we got hot showers today! Wooot!! Then, we
had some free time as the rangers worked on fixing the trucks. Constant
problems, apparently. Lol. I got to work on my project, adding in the data from
dominant male lions and seeing how that affects everyone else. Unfortunately, I
boggled something up and did a few of the spreadsheets in-completely, and to go
back and fix them all will take a while. I was considering not going on
afternoon drive, to have more time to work, but I asked Stewart for an executive
decision, and he voted go! So off we went, leaving around 3 for general
monitoring. Lukas took us out to go find the ellies to do some observations on
one of the females who had a radio telemetry collar that is acting up. We were
driving, and I was constructing the telemetry set. When I got it all fixed up,
but before turning it on, we looked up and saw the silly ellies right across a
drainage line! So I turned the system on, and sure enough, it was the exact
herd that we were hoping to find today! What are the odds! We watched them for
a while and were able to get pictures of the ellie with the collar. They moved
off, so we went around to intercept them. By this time, I had deconstructed the
telemetry and put it away. Lukas asked me to build it again because we didn’t
intercept the ellies where we expected. So I start doing that, and no sooner
did I plug in the last cord, when the car stopped quickly. I looked up, and
ellies! Not 10 meters from the car! Sheesh! Little buggers. The whole herd
paraded right past us, with a few of the elephants getting close enough to
touch it! There were three babies with them, and one of the babies got really
close and had his ears raised. We were prepared to get charged, because some of
the ellies seemed a little annoyed that we were parked near their path. But,
they passed with no incident and disappeared into a rather thick block. After that,
we tried to decide where we wanted to go. We ended up driving down to Washeshe;
a beautiful river crossing that has a large sandy beach, and finding 4 rhinos.
It was Balega, Ganda Ganda, and Balega’s new calf, Bagheeri. Also, Robin,
Balega’s last calf, was with them as well, which is odd because he got run out
of the group last month for a while. But they apparently area accepting him
again for the time being. The rhinos were really relaxed and decided to get
really close to the car. I think Ganda Ganda almost touched Stewart’s arm with
his horns! The little calf, Bagheeri, was sniffing the tracker seat, very
curious, but calm. We sat there for a while as the sun went down, watching the
rhinos interact. Of course, Emily, Molly, and I had to take selfies with rhinos
in the background. I mean, they were so close! :D After chilling with them for a while, we tried to get a new
plan of action. We drove around for a while, seeing some giraffe, zebra,
impala, nyala, and kudu. We saw baby zebra that was SO cute. Then, we went
along an area that leopards have been sighted in recently, but no luck, once
again. It sucks, because I have so much FOMO that they will find a leopard
without me, that I hate skipping drives. I just know, the ONE general
monitoring drive I skip, they will just happen to cross paths with a leopard,
perhaps even a leopard with cubs or a leopard on a kill! One of these days, we
are BOUND to be in the right place at the right time… right?? After that, we
headed home, looking for cool nocturnal mammals on the way. Right as we were
about to pull onto Twines camp area, we saw a lone hyena crossing the road. I just
saw the animal for a split second as it headed toward the bush, but Kelsie and
her dad got a good visual of an adult hyena that had been traveling down the
road. When the light passed over the hyena, it bolted into the bush. We were
unable to locate it after circling the block, but it was definitely a cool
sighting. We have been hearing them close by at night, as well as seeing a lot
of tracks bear camp. I have an inclination that there might be a den in a
nearby block to camp, or a male is hiding out there on his territory. Maybe we
will get lucky and locate him! We got home from drive around 6:40, and Kelsie
and I had dinner duty. She had made the pizza dough before the drive, so we had
to chop veggies and prepare everything. I fried up chunks of bacon, which is
thicker and softer here, more like thin-sliced ham, yum! We made four pizzas,
which took a good amount of time, but they were absolutely scrumptious! Andrew
had built us a nice fire for when we came back from the COLD, COLD drive, and
we all sat around and talked for a while, with dinner. It was lovely, because we
really haven’t been doing that as much this week. We all turned in around 10,
and we have bush clearing tomorrow, so it’s a later morning again! :)
There are a lot of really cool sycamore fig trees that are HUGE!
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