South African Travels, Day 6

What do an eland baby and an adult rhino have in common? Scroll to find out!

Today marked the first day that we were able to sleep in a little. Breakfast was at 7:30, so sleeping in until 6:15 was fantastic. We had a pretty casual morning, since the only thing planned for the day was going to another game farm nearby and working on a few animals there.

We loaded up in our van and made the short trek over to the game farm. On the agenda today was removing a porcupine quill from a sable's ear, tending to a wound on a giraffe's chest, and redressing a pretty bad wound on a baby eland's hindquarters. The farm we arrived at was, in keeping with the theme, just beautiful. It even had the typical African tree everyone pictures when thinking about Africa:

Gorgeous

Paved road through property

S t r e t c h into the tops of the trees!

There were several houses planted throughout the farm, a couple of which were for sale, meaning that I could go live over there and just watch the farm's zebras, waterbuck, wildebeest, giraffes, sables, and elands go about their lives. I wonder how Fiona and Romeo would react in an encounter with any of these guys... I'm betting Romeo would probably run away while Fiona (tragically) tried to engage them in play.

We started off with the sable. Sables are apparently pretty aggressive, so we had to be careful once it was sedated and down. Something that we learned in class about darting animals is that, if you're going to use a vehicle to approach them to dart them, use something they are familiar with. For instance, if you go to a giraffe farm and the giraffes see golf carts go by all the time, then approaching them in a golf cart isn't going to raise their suspicions too much.

Derik got into the back of one of the farm's trucks, and off they went through the pasture to the herd of sables.

Unsuspecting.

He picked out the one with the quill and darted her. When she finally went down, we raced over to her in the back of our truck.

Ouch!

Stephen performed the "surgery" and removed the quill. Fun fact: sables are one of the only animals that panic less without a blindfold than with. The more you know!

The herd watched on as we messed with one of its members, along with a separate herd of zebra. I really thought they were going to charge over to take her back, but fortunately, they didn't get much closer than this:

Creepers.

The sable was reversed, and she hurried quickly back to her compadres.

Next up was the giraffe, and I will preface this part with saying that giraffes are very sensitive to anesthesia. I have heard of cases where they just would not wake up after surgery, even though everything went well. One of the many good things about wildlife vets is that they can discover ways to combat this sensitivity through experience.

The plan with this giraffe was to dart her, restrain her once she was down by sitting on her neck, and then immediately reverse the sedation. Unfortunately, nature sometimes has its own plans.

The ranch, first of all, was huge, and most of it was covered in grass at least as tall as me, if not taller. There were also heavily forested places that were very scrubby. The giraffe, once darted, took off running and ran through a foresty area, where we lost sight of her. Since time was a factor, we all jumped off the truck and took off on foot to find her.

Like I said, the grass we were walking through was TALL. Rebecca and I paired up and begin the awful process of wading through it. Ticks were definitely at the front of our minds, since the sable had been just covered in them (and we knew they were out there). I saw a couple running up the back of Rebecca's leg at one point and knocked them off, causing the both of us to have a freakout session. We tried to jump from less grassy place to less grassy place, but it was a lost cause. At one point, a branch hooked onto Rebecca's boot in a snake-like manner, and she screamed and started jumping up and down while I screamed "IT'S NOT A SNAKE! IT'S NOT A SNAKE!" Once that was established, we heard something crashing through the grass and looked up to see a red blur about 15 feet from us. Fortunately it was just a dik-dik, but, since there was literally no one else in sight, it caused quite a fright. We wondered what we were going to do if we stumbled upon the giraffe since we had no phones and had no idea where everyone else is.

Shortly after the dik dik, I looked up and realized we were really close to one of the houses on the property, and lo and behold it had a good portion of manicured, mowed lawn around it without a fence separating it from the wilderness. I pointed it out to Rebecca and suggested we make a break for it. We had to cross through some nasty looking shrubbery to get to it, but we ran and jumped and landed in the yard, furiously brushing ourselves off while going "Eww eww ewww are they all over me?!?!" In the process I looked up and noticed four women sitting on the back porch of the house having tea, all watching us. I'm sure we were a sight- two girls appearing out of the middle of the African bush that very obviously weren't meant to be out in it. I murmured to Rebecca something like "Great, we have an audience", and she, being less anti-social than I, looked up and said "Hi!" The women all laughed and returned the greeting. Rebecca apologized and one of them said something like "No worries, go on about your business". With a sigh, we turned and waded back into the sea of grass.

We did end up finding some blood that looked fresh, and we tried tracking it, but to no avail. About 20 - 30 minutes after setting out on foot, Louis and Dr. Logan appeared in a truck to pick up the searchers. After picking us up, they headed for Heath, who took this totally legit picture:

Just conversing about giraffe blood

I love how every vehicle in Africa is an off-roader, whether made for it or not.

The giraffe had been found, but it was too late. She had gone over by the lake on the property and gone down in the tall grass, rendering her virtually invisible, except to maybe a bird. It was awful and incredibly sad to have lost her. I think Derik took it the hardest. The owners were very understanding; they knew that wild animals are very difficult to work with medically and this kind of thing happens, unfortunately. We took a small break where no one said much of anything, but then we had to finish up our job on the farm.

Our final patient was the baby eland. About a week before, Derik had gone out to the farm to check out the eland because it had a huge wound on its hindquarters, caused by ticks. I won't include any pictures because they are quite graphic, but to give you an idea- Derik had already treated it the week before, and it still looked like something out of a zombie movie. Even so, he said it looked 100% better than when he had first seen it. Poor eland.

Getting to the baby was something of a feat, as the adult elands were quite suspicious of us after watching us drive around with the sables earlier. The baby was darted, but it did not want to go down. We drove back and forth, trying to keep it contained to one part of the property, but ultimately we had to get out and circle it (once it was separated from the adults) and then Stephen tackled it as it ran at him, effectively catching it.

It was loaded up on the back of a truck so that its wound could be cleaned and redressed while it was monitored. I got to listen to its heart while it was back there- I felt like such a vet.

Dr. Kristin Burlingame, BS

After it was treated, it was carried off to a grassy spot, and I was tasked with spraying down all of the ticks on it- it was completely covered, like the sable.

Tick pictures not included because ain't nobody want to see that

I then stepped back and off to the side, mildly watching as Derik asked who was going to give it the reversal injection intro-veinously. Suddenly, he looked up at me and said, 'You are!" I made a face like o.O and he was like, you can do it! So then he, Rebecca, and Pat proceeded to show me how to give an IV injection, and I successfully performed my first IV injection and my second injection ever on an eland.

So a baby eland and an adult rhino = my first IV and IM injections, respectively. Now you know.

Fun (embarrassing) story: while I was crouched over the eland preparing for the injection, I looked down and saw a tick running up my hand. I bit out a bad word and swung my hand violently, hitting Derik in the process, who was crouched next to me. Rebecca said "Well, if they thought you were a nice girl before, now they know better." If you know me, you know this is the story of my life. Being in a foreign country mattered not. Sigh.

Getting prepared to peace out

Somehow the entire day passed while we were at the game farm. I think we finished up out there around 4:00. Surprisingly, no one seemed to mind or realize that we had forgotten about lunch; there was just too much going on. We loaded up and headed back home.

Since we had an earlier night, we got to enjoy the grounds a little more. I went up the hill to the "Africa House", a building housing computers and most of our male participants dormitory style, and got on the internet for the first time while sitting on the veranda in front of it, sipping wine and listening to crickets as night fell. After it got dark, I made my way back to the dining area. It was pitch black out to my right, and as I was walking, I heard an animal snort at me out in the dark, which increased my walking speed quite a bit. I made it back safely and hung out with the group during dinner, including Michelle's two little girls, who thought it would be great fun to play matchmaker with me since I am single (lol). Later that evening, Derik, Rebecca and I rode into Nelspruit to enjoy the night life, but everything was closed... apparently they don't appreciate Thursday nights there like we do here.

Our next day promised adventures with one of the animals I was most excited to work with- read on if you'd like to find out which!



Photo credit: the first 3 pictures belong to me; 1st sable pic, 3rd sable pic, truck pic and last picture belong to Heath Culp of Poodledog productions, and 2nd sable pic and 1st two eland pics belong to Dr. Jim Derr.