Leia

Sadly we have recently had to say goodbye to one of our oldest and most charismatic residents, 13 year old Leia, who was put to sleep after entering the final stages of renal failure. Leia was the second cheetah to arrive at CCF in 1997 and has been one of the stars of the show ever since. Leia was the quintessential cheetah with elegant features and a regal demeanor, exactly the kind of cheetah you would imagine sitting by the Pharaoh’s side in ancient Egypt.

Leia can claim to be one of CCF’s most photographed cats as her pen was visited almost daily by tourists enjoying a cheetah viewing safari and she has amazed hundreds of people over the years with her amazing running at cheetah runs, in-fact Leia was still putting some of our younger cats to shame only 6 months ago until her illness took over.


Leia will be greatly missed by all who knew her but especially by myself and Kate who have had the pleasure of looking after her for 19 months. It feels very strange not seeing her on our daily feeding routine :(


Photos by Rob Thomson.

Englehardt and the battle of the half drum

The bald head I am kissing in the pic below belongs to Englehardt, our assistant farm manager. Englehardt is the guy myself and Kate go to whenever we need some meat, a pen mowed or a fence fixed.

Englehardt often tries to run away at the very sight of us as he knows more often than not we are going to ask him to do something that will probably mess up his day. And when I do catch up with him I get a friendly greeting: ‘What the f**k do you want now?!’ Because I appreciate the work Englehardt does I began to show my gratitude by offering him the occasional 6-pack whenever his personal supply was dry. However, funnily enough the frequency of his personal supply drying up began to increase and I was greeted more and more by a beaming Englehardt asking: ‘my brother, can I have a 6-pack?’ Englehardt even became a regular visitor to Boskop, pleading with me to give him some liquid refreshment and usually I just gave in just to make him go away. However, one day Englehardt pushed his luck and changed the dynamic of this drink exchange. After pleading with me all day for a 6-pack I again yielded and said ok, you can go to Boskop and take a 6-pack from the fridge. Englehardt proceed to do just that but when he found Kate at Boskop he told her that I had said he could take TWO 6-packs!! When I discovered this treachery I decided enough was enough. I really should have expected such behaviour seeing as Englehardt is a dirty Manchester Utd supporter!

So I decided it was time for Englehardt to give a little back and the next time I saw him I laid out my demands. There would be no more drink until he got me a new half drum for us to make fires in at Boskop (our current one was rusting away). I thought this would be a fairly simple demand and I would have the half drum within the week, oh how wrong I was! One week turned into two, two weeks into three and then a month had gone by, and still no half drum. All the while Englehardt was still pleading to get more 6-packs! But this time I stood firm: ‘NO Englehardt, BAD Englehardt…..WHERE IS MY HALF DRUM?!!’ An already tipsy Englehardt even ambushed me at Boskop, forcing himself upon me, hugging, kissing and proclaiming how we are brothers. But again I said no and sent him on his way empty handed. It became clear that this was a lesson he had to learn and over the next month every time I saw him I gave him a hard time and asked the question that would be repeated a million times: 'where is my half drum?!’

Then, one day as we were all sat in a staff meeting the sound of sawing could be heard from the direction of the barn. Englehardt, who was sat next to me then leaned over and said ‘you hear that? There’s your f**king half drum!’ Could it be true? The meeting ended and I walked with anticipation to the barn and there it was, a beautiful drum sawed in two! I grabbed Englehardt and made him pose for a photo to record the momentous event.

And the first words out of his mouth after handing it over to me? ‘Now can I have a 6-pack…for the love of god?!’ So I embraced him said ‘Englehardt, no you can’t!’ I then explained to Englehardt that the half drum was payment for past 6-packs NOT in exchange for more 6-packs!!! I was then insulted with language I will not utter here. And so it was that Englehardt learnt his lesson.

I took the new half drum back home to Boskop that night and we christened it with its first of what will be many fires, and a great first fire it was. We were joined by a few more people from CCF and a great night was had raving to Infected Mushroom…..more on them to come!

The next day at five after a hard day at work I really wanted to go back to Boskop and stay there for dinner. However, we have a one car only to Boskop rule and no other Boskopians wanted to go. So I was stranded at CCF unless there was someone willing to give me a lift…… you guessed it. Upon hearing of my desire to go back to Boskop Englehardt graciously offered his services, for a price……..a 6-pack. I was so keen on getting back home I accepted and upon arrival at Boskop I handed over the prize and took the pic you see below.

In fact, this pic is probably how I will always remember Englehardt…….smiling and looking very pleased with himself whilst holding a 6-pack with my name it.

Magic Matt's CCF 2009 Awards

Welcome to Magic Matt's 2009 CCF awards! Another year has gone and to celebrate surviving through it (literally) I have handed out some awards to staff, volunteers and cheetahs in recognition of their hard work and dedication to the cause. So lets begin.....

The Award for the most nervous smiles after almost dieing in a car crash goes to:
Rob Thomson, Ryan Richards, Leigh Whelpton,
Kate Echement and Matt Cleverley

The Award for the most uncomfortable place to have a nap goes to....

Kate Echement

The Award for the best 'i'm king of the world pose' goes to…….

James 'merry xmas everybody' Slade

The Award for best impression of a rhino goes to …….

Rob Thomson

The Award for being able to look miserable even when doing something exciting goes to...

Christina Martin

The Award for the best surprised drunken face goes to…….

Matt Cleverley and Gunther Roeber

The Award for being the best upper class English punk kid goes to ........

Hamish Baillie

The Award for the scariest, chocolate crazed smile goes to ……

Cheri Morkel

The Award for most stylish peice of clothing goes to ……

The English gentleman hat (modelled by Michael)

The Award for best impression of E.T by a cheetah goes to …..

Obi Wan

The Award for the most enthusiastic meat eater goes to ..........

Matt Cleverley

And finally the Award for the greatest cheetah in the world goes to…….

Xena! (obviously)

Congratulations to the winners! Have a great 2010 everyone!!

The Three Penguins

Not so long ago we said farewell to three of our volunteers, Jourdan, Amy and Christina. During their time here they joined forces and conspired to make my life as difficult as possible and initiated a prank war – for this contest they called themselves The Three Penguins. This has something to do with the film Madagascar (which I haven’t actually seen) therefore I was then dubbed ‘King Julian’ – I later learned that King Julian is a rather groovy Lemur so I was actually quite pleased with the name (yet another failure on your part penguins!).

So throughout this blog entry I will keep score so there will forever be no doubt who came out on top (its me by the way, oh yes it is Penguins read on and weep!). But first, who exactly were my adversaries? First up we have Amy, a South African teenager who god bless her has a lot to learn about the ways of the world and can best be described as….’special’. In fact the pic below pretty much sums her up :)

Next is Jourdan an American veterinary student who spent most of her time playing with cheetah poo, since she has gone the air smells sweet and is ok to breath again. Finally and least is Christina, least because when we first saw her we thought a small child had strayed from the playground and got lost – she’s smaller than Cheri believe it or not (in the pic below, Jourdan on the left is actually sitting a good 10 feet behind Christina!)

Let it be known the Penguins struck the first act of war in an extremely dangerous and unprovoked attack, which was all caused by them being unable to take some well-meant constructive criticism. You see, the troublesome trio liked to make desserts on the weekend and I would give my honest opinion on their concoctions - because if I didn’t tell them the truth how would they learn from their mistakes, right? So when I tasted a piece of their ‘Apple Pie’ I simply gave them the truth, which was that the pie was ‘all right’. This comment was meant with only good intentions but instead of being thanked for my expert opinion I was bombarded with insults and hurtful names. The next thing they attempted was ‘strawberry ice cream’. I found the ice cream in the freezer and thought I would playfully write my name in it as a way of bridging the divide that was developing between us. However, later that day when they handed me a portion my ninja like instincts told me that something was a miss. As I slid the pink sloppy goo around my bowl I noticed something in the ice cream that was not a strawberry, upon closer inspection the horrifying truth was revealed……the dirty Penguins had placed a filthy rock in my ice cream!! I could not believe it, all I had done was try and nurture them like a mother cheetah would nurture her cubs but I had my generous efforts thrown back in my face, I could have chocked to death on that rock!

Score: Penguins 1 King Julian 0

So the next day I found the ice cream in the freezer again, but this time I added an extra ingredient of my own – a generous portion of peas! Unfortunately I was not able to see the moment they discovered the peas but I was told it had the desired effect and they were thoroughly pissed off!

Score: Penguins 1 King Julian 1

The pea sabotage provoked the penguins to spend the rest of that evening plotting and scheming and they thought they had come up with a perfect way of getting instant revenge. Christina (who lived with me at Boskop) snuck into my room and stole a pair of my flip-flops, put them into a tub of water and left it in the freezer over night. In the morning I discovered the flip-flops floating in the tub of unfrozen water along with a note declaring war, signed by the Three Penguins. However, this attack was a spectacular own goal as the flip-flops they chose were my work flops, which were dirty and stinky. Also because our freezer is on a timer and not on constantly throughout the night the water did not freeze – so what the Penguins had actually done was wash my flip-flops – result!

Score: Penguins 1 King Julian 2

It is time to mention that during this war I had given a challenge to Christina who was volunteering with us through the zookeeper internship. The challenge was to learn all 21 Bellebenno cheetahs before she left – a challenge that others have taken and failed (sorry Tamara). If she was successful I would buy her a 6-pack of her choosing, if she failed then I would be the recipient of the 6-pack. Despite the prospect of loosing I guided Christina with care and understanding, but again my generosity was unappreciated and Christina would often talk back to me and give me grief. Christina was also the cockiest of the Penguins and often bragged about the pranks she had played on her friends and that I shouldn’t mess with her. So I felt no shame in singling her out for special treatment including:

# Throwing a big stick swarming with bees at her feet (her face and her screams of ‘are you f**king crazy’ will make me smile for the rest of my days).

# Kicking a football at her head – what made this extra great was the fact that not only did the football hit her but when she raised her hand to defend herself she hit herself in the head with her camera leaving a bruise.

# Squirting her in the face with a hose (I was actually aiming for Amy but fate intervened).

# Stabbing her with her a sharp stick (I stabbed her in response to one of her smart ass comments but I didn’t know the stick was as sharp as it was, again fate knowingly intervened).

# Removing important letters from her favourite game of Bananagrams – this was probably my cleverest idea but unfortunately she failed to play the game again after I had done it so I concede this as an own goal.

Score: Penguins 2 King Julian 6

However, my own goal was nothing compared to the Penguin’s next effort. I had brought my ipod and speakers to dinner at the hot spot one night and when I went to go home to Boskop I left them behind on the dinner table. Jordan and Amy found them and decided to go up to the tower and have an impromptu dance party. Around this time my departure for Boskop was slightly delayed due to an issue with the dogs and I needed to find Amy to ask her a question. However, I couldn’t find her anywhere and even started shouting for her – Amy and Jourdan mistakenly thought I was on the rampage about my ipod and decided not to show themselves. After I had left they then went to the office and connected my ipod to a computer and attempted to mess with the contents, however all they managed to do was add some of my albums into the ’My Playlists’ menu - this is nothing but a minor inconvenience for me but I will concede a point. So, thinking that I was mad about my missing ipod (in fact had no idea it was missing) Jordan and Amy thought it would be highly amusing to plant my ipod and speakers into the car we had driven to Boskop with the hope that I would discover them the next morning and start cursing the name of the Penguins. To do this Jourdan got up ridiculously early in the morning and RAN the 7km to Boskop, snuck through our gates and placed the ipod and speakers on the back seat of the car and then ran back to CCF! HOWEVER, what they didn’t know was that we had taken two cars to Boskop (as Rob had to leave much earlier than the rest of us) and he decided to take the car with the ipod inside, myself and the other boskopians took another car into work. When I finally found my ipod later that morning I simply thought I had forgotten to bring it back into the house upon returning home the previous night and thought nothing of it. This is what you would call an EPIC fail!

Score: Penguins 3 King Julian 7

I will be fair and give the penguins points for placing a goat horn in my water bottle, obtaining video footage of me falling over a football and for the time Christina passed out at the base of the toilet after drinking way too much tequila and hence scaring me to death when I went to use said toilet! I also lost a bet with Jourdan which I can’t go into too much detail here as this is a public forum, but the result was me having to hand over half a 6-pack.

Score: Penguins 7 King Julian 7
Ooooh, the score is so close I hear you say …..but wait:

# When Christina was helping Amy carefully take out a burr that had got caught in her hair I walked over with my leatherman and just cut it straight out of her hair (the look of shock on Amy’s face will also make me smile for the rest of my days).

# When Amy was taking a swig from her platypus water bottle on the drive back from feeding I reached over and squeezed it, causing water to explode all over her face.

# When I found Jourdan’s bag unguarded I filled it with dead moths.

Score: Penguins 7 King Julian 10

Sadly, Christina also failed to correctly ID all 21 Bellebenno cheetahs on her official test, and I mean sadly as I willed her to succeed, I even gave her a second test but alas she failed again. Therefore I was reluctantly the recipient of a sweet smelling $50 note to buy my 6-pack of Hunters Gold.

Score: Penguins 7 King Julian 11

Finally, in the Penguins last few days as a group they pretty much conceded defeat by kneeling down in front of me begging for forgiveness and offering me another 6-pack of Hunters Gold. I even have photographic proof that this act of submission took place, behold:

Final Score: Penguins 7 King Julian 12!

Defeated it was time for the Penguins to leave and I told them that to replicate their presence I would stab myself in the ass with a pin every two minutes. So as we said our goodbyes they handed me a departing gift – 3 pins (one of them was bent so I have called that one Amy).

Now this is hard for me to say but I do kind of miss them, we no longer have Amy to amuse us with her habit of splurting out whatever mad thoughts popped into her head (believe me, what goes on in her head is madder than an episode of the Mighty Boosh), I can no longer tease Jourdan the smelly poop lady and I miss finding ways to cause physical and mental pain to Christina. :(

I will now await the deluge of angry accusations of foul play from the Penguins but whatever you say you three…… King Julian kicked your asses!!!! Mwwhhaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!

Blog of the Week!

When I started this blog I thought it would only be seen by friends and family who would just check on it every now and then to check that i'm still alive. But much to my surpise my blog appears to be finding a wider audience and this week one of my blog entries has been deemed worthy enough to be considered blog entry of the week on southafrica.to (an online travel agency). The entry in question is entitled 'Back to Work' which involved my stories about getting an upgrade from Air Namibia and my now infamous battle with a vicious warthog (which actually gets mentioned in the blog description on the site). Don't believe me?! Then check out the link below and see for yourself:

http://www.southafrica.to/transport/Airlines/cheapest-flight-survey/2009/20091128-Interlink-DSTV.php5

So thank you Karen from southafrica.to, I hope your readers enjoyed the blog and will keep checking in on my African adventure :)

Bella and Padme

The small cute cheetah you see below and on the left of the pic above is Bella, probably our cutest cheetah. The grumpy looking cat to the right of Bella is Padme, one of our feistiest females, second only to the infamous Xena. When Bella first came to CCF in October 2008 she was only 5 months old and was found without a mother which meant that she would not be able to learn to hunt and therefore have to stay with us for the rest of her life (cheetahs learn to hunt from their mother who they stay with for ~18 months).

Upon arrival Bella was very shy and was easily scared when approached. However, she slowly became used to her new home and started to greet myself and Kate in the way most of our cheetahs do, with hisses, spits and paw slapping. However, no matter how hard she tried Bella was just not very intimidating and only provoked myself and Kate into saying: 'ahhhh, you're so cute!' Not long before Bella arrived we had two 7 month old orphaned cheetahs come in, a brother and sister who are now known as Padme (see pic below) and Obi-Wan (yes there are lots of Star Wars fans here at CCF!). Right from the start we knew these two cats were going to be trouble as they were both very confident about coming right up to myself and Kate at feeding time and giving us a very impressive synchronised display of tough posturing. Sadly, it was soon time to seperate brother and sister and Padme was then introduced to little Bella - it has to be said we were a little apprehensive and thought Padme would eat Bella for lunch, but thankfully they hit it of immediatly.

Padme is definitely the dominant figure in this pairing and often unnecessarily picks on Bella at feeding time, smacking her out of the way and ensuring she gets her peice of meat first. However, Bella is learning from her mentor and is getting some bad ass attitude of her own and on occasion getting her own back on Padme. One day Padme got so worked up at feeding time that when she was chucked her meat she was unable to get a good grip on it and started to cause quite a commotion, Bella meanwhile was just sitting patiently beside her looking bemused. As Padme continued to make a right mess of taking her meal Bella did a sneaky double take before smacking Padme right in the face with a good right hook - this seemed to have knocked some sense into Padme who then finaly grabbed her meat and ran away with it. Seeing little Bella grow up from small shy bundle of fluff into a kick ass cheetah (as the pic below clearly demonstrates) made both myself and Kate very proud!

ahhhhh, but she is still sooooooo cute!!! :)

Goat Devil Update: Revenge!

In my previous blog you may recall me stating my intent to get revenge on the goat devil, well true to my word revenge was well and truly mine!!!! The goat devil's stay in the pen with Amos resulted in him missing his appointment with a bath full of dip. However, the dipping was re-scheduled and I was there in person to get some justice!

At first I thought the devil had used his demonic powers to escape the pen as I was unable to find him. However, the devil was found hiding like a coward under an old bakkie canopy they use for shelter - he obviusly knew what was in store for him.

I grabbed him from underneath the shelter and pulled him over to the bath of dip and turned him over onto his back where he was quickly hoisted into the air and plunged into the dip. I then thouroughly soaked him and enjoyed his screams of discomfort!

After his dipping he looked very sorry for himself and walked away sulking, knowing that he had at last met his match! Lets hope the dipping acted like a baptism and makes him turn his back on the dark side. If he doesn't then rest assured, I will be waiting to resume battle!