Etosha!

Well who'd have thought this time last year when i was struggling to learn to drive that a year later i would be driving people on safari, but thats what i did this weekend and loved it!!!!!!!!! I safely drove 4 of our volunteers there and back and had a great time camping and having a bbq under the african sky. We saw Black rhino, cheetahs, lions and a lots of elephant, can't wait to go again. Etosha is amazing!! Go!

The Day the Disney Died

Today i am very glad to be alive as yesterday a wheel flew of my beloved feeding car known as the Disney. As you can imagine it was quite a shock to be driving along only to hear a huge metalic crashing noise and feel the car dip to one side, it was an even bigger shock to realise the brakes were failing to work! Fortunatly i had my wits about me and manged to keep the car on the road, phew!!!!! But do i get any credit from my terrified passengers for saving their lives? Of course not!!! The wheel deciding to fall of was obviously my fault! Ungratefull gits! But alas, the Disney is now in a very sorry state, will she rise from the dead?? Watch this space!

Me, Little C and A lil Stalking Cheetah Cub!

Cute Puppies!

One of our livestock guarding dogs, Penda gave birth to 9 unbelievably cute puppies a couple of weeks ago and all 9 are growing up fast. So when the pups started to crawl one of my jobs was to build a puppy barrier that would enable penda to have access in and out of her hut but at the same time keep puppys in.

So I built what i thought was a perfect barrier constructed from wooden poles and string only to find the next day that somehow one of the puppies had escaped! So I added an extra pole, but again the next day 2 puppies had escaped!! Unbelivable!! So I further increased the height of the barrier only to have the lil buggers escape again. I could not understand how they were doing it, but the crafty pups had two tricks up their sleeves, one was to suck on Penda's teets so hard that when she jumped over the barrier they went with her and the other was to use the poles I constucted the barrier with like a ladder!

So i then added some flat cardboard to the barrier creating a flat surface, aha!!! That will stop them. However, within 30 minutes 4 had hurled themselves over so i gave up! The lil puppy genius' now have full access to their pen. Still its hard to be mad at something so damn cute!!!

Fun in the Sun

Mitch-Stuart, RIP

This is a sad story about 2 baby tree rats who fell from their nest and were rescued by Treena, one of CCF’s Earthwatch volunteers. They were tiny, no bigger than the tip of your thumb. One died quickly after but the other hung on in there. So when Treena had to go home she passed the lil guy onto myself and Lizzie, one of my CCF colleagues. Lizzie and I had a bit of a disagreement about what to name him, I wanted Mitch and she wanted Stuart (cos that’s original isn’t it?!!), we made a compromise and hence Mitch-Stuart became his name! On our first night together lil Mitch-Stuart sat in my hand as I watched the Goonies. He then spent the night with Lizzie and we spent some quality time together around the breakfast table. However, later that day we found poor Mitch-Stuart almost lifeless in his little box struggling for breath. It was clear that his time was up and so Lizzie performed the delicate procedure of sending him to the light by hurling him at the floor. We then took Mitch-Stuart outside and buried him under a tree, we said a few words, hugged and vowed to always remember the lil bundle of cuteness that was Mitch-Stuart!