Good morning guys,
I had a pretty good day yesterday. Kaetlyn brought me out to our reserve, “the Little Serengeti,” to go over the camera trap route that she has been using. We switched memory sticks and batteries on most of the camera. We will take the memory sticks back to the office and analyze the photos, categorizing photos by species and making special note if we see any carnivores or black rhinos so we can track their numbers and movements on the reserve. The Reserve is my happy place, it’s where I feel most at peace and every time I am out there I see something that inspires me to fall in love with this place all over again. Yesterday, we saw a beautiful longneck with just the sweetest face! Also many troops of baboons and one had some females with tiny babies holding on to their bellies as they walked around.
See the baby holding onto her belly?
Kaetlyn also gave me a lesson on driving a standard truck from the wrong side (at least to an American) of the vehicle and on the wrong side of the road. I haven’t driven a manual since I was 16 so it was all kinds of new lessons for me, plus the Mahindra does not like to go into or stay in 1st gear and doesn’t have 3rd gear whatsoever so that just added to the … fun? Hehe, but the good news is I didn’t stall! I had a few rough shifts, but kept it going. Almost all the vehicles around here are standards, so I best get to practicing – and I much rather practice in the reserve than in town! Kaetlyn is either extremely nice or I truly didn’t do that bad of a job, but she said I am a natural and should pick it back up rather quickly.
She may be a turd-nugget, but the Mahindra is such a picturesque safari truck.
We got back to the office mid-afternoon and that brings me to the Walking Dead. Have you watched it before? You know when the walkers know that there is a human on the other side of a doorway and they just pile right over top of each other to push through the door with only eating on their mind? The thought of a potential meal is the only thing that drives them and they will push through tiny holes, other walkers, ANYTHING just to get their food source? And the way they just surround the living reaching out to them with their hands and clambering all over them? Have you ever stood in a pen of bottle raised baby goats holding a bottle of milk before? Yep. It’s the Walking Dead: Goat Edition. One of my tasks at CCF is to oversee the model farm since I grew up on a small livestock farm and have lots of experience breeding and raising sheep and goats. Currently it’s kidding season and we have tons of bottle diary kids and few bottle Boer goat kids that we rejected by maiden mothers. Three times a day I risk my life (well maybe just my knuckles – those little teeth hurt) to bottle feed 20+ (it increases daily) kids and giggle to myself and sometimes the Namibian farmhand that is assisting me, even though none of them have any clue what I am talking about, because I am reminded of the Walking Dead. Just the thought of these little fluffy, floppy eared, things as blood crazy zombies cracks me up.
So it’s almost time to start work and my little Walker Goats are probably starving to death (at least in their minds), so I best get off here and go tend to them. I hope that you have a good day!
adventureiswild.com 