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| Now that's cute, isn't it?! |
Monday morning, I woke up bright and early and still very
sleepy at 5am. We drove out to a farm to measure, deworm and eartag a sable,
then came back to the Osmers farm and had to do the same for the three of their
sables. Bossie, the veterinarian, let me inject some of the animals with their
intramuscular injections. After that, Zander and I drove Lyndsey, the girl from
Oklahoma to the Three Bridges restaurant/oasis where she caught her shuttle to
the Joburg airport. After that, Zander and I went grocery shopping, and
fortunately I already knew how to work a Pick’n’Pay. Like a pro J haha! We bought a lot
of sandwich stuff and some meat of course and some vegetables and fruit only
because I insisted. Men and grocery shopping… pshhhh. (just kidding...mostly.)
In case you're wondering where I am in the world - one of my friends told me she wished she could picture where I am... here is a map showing where I am:
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| I'm somewhere in the green between that red A dot and the word "Phalaborwa." |
I should also note, this day was a national public holiday
in South Africa, because 16 June is Youth Day (the anniversary of the Soweto
school march and shooting in 1976), and since it fell on a Sunday, Monday was
the public holiday. As a result, there wasn’t a whole lot going on in the
afternoon in terms of veterinary appointments. As a result, I spent most of the
afternoon hanging out with the Osmers family at Ben’s house, went on a quick
game drive to see his black impala (extremely rare animals) and saddleback
impalas (also pretty rare). We also went to see the rhinos…there are seven of
them living on the farm and so we went and looked at them munching away,
grazing. That was cool. On our way back from visiting the rhinos, Zander and I
were riding in a four wheeler (ironically, a rhino – kind of like our gator),
and a mama ostrich with four babies got really mad and chased us. She was
extremely protective and quite aggressive. Her legs got pinkish red in front,
apparently a really bad sign, a “you better run like you’re running through
hell” kind of sign. So we drove away quite speedily. Ostriches: officially the scariest animal to me. Bossie told me that he'd rather face a buffalo than an angry ostrich. That's saying a lot. Ostriches are super dangerous. Stay away.
The next day, just on the way to pick up Bossie, I
encountered rhinos, giraffes, warthogs, baboons, zebra, vervoet monkeys,
steenbock and saddleback impala. What did you see on your way to work? We made
a trip to Moholoholo rehab center, a conservation farm right outside Kruger
National Park. It has many animals, lots of whom were brought there by Bossie
and SA WorldVets because they were injured or orphaned and too young or hurt to
fend for themselves in the wild. That’s the nice thing about privately owned
animals versus ones in National Parks. Privately owned ones can be rescued and
saved. National Parks animals…well you have to let nature take its course. If
an animal gets hurt or orphaned or left behind or whatever, you have to just
sit back and watch it. I don’t think I could ever have a career in that.
Actually, I’m sure I couldn’t. At Moholoholo, since I was a vet student and
because of SA WorldVets’ relationship with the rehab center, I got VIP
treatment and was allowed to get very up close with some of the animals. With
some of them, they try to minimize human contact if they are going to
mature/heal to the point of being able to be released back into the wild. If
some are never going to heal (for example an endangered vulture species member
with a wing that was broken by a power line and had to b eventually amputated),
they just let them remain at the rehab center until they die. Which is kind of
nice. It’s not the wild, it’s not exactly their natural habitat, but they have
huge enclosures and promote conservation education. Since I’m prevet and was
with SA WorldVets, I got to meet their cheetah and leopard. The leopard had
been caught in a snare and pretty badly injured beyond repair. I got to fed the
vultures and batterons (another wild bird species that is endangered). I
obviously didn’t touch the honeybadgers, because that would’ve been pretty
stupid. We all know how honeybadgers behave. Also, the honeybadgers here were
extra bad.
In the afternoon, we drove to a scenic viewpoint…on the
farm. It was gorgeous. I couldn’t believe it was right there. You can see for kilometers and kilometers without interruption. It's incredible!
Then we drove to
Ben’s place and Ben’s dad shared some biltong (I don’t know what animal it came
from...kudu maybe?) with me and then we went to dart a reedbuck that was lame. But the
reedbuck ran so fast after it was darted that we couldn’t find it for about
fifteen minutes, and by that time it had been lying on its side for so long
that it was barely breathing. As a result, we couldn’t treat the lameness and
had to immediately wake it up. Wildlife medicine. Ooof. That was a close one.
On the way back, the car’s engine caught on fire and started smoking, so that
was…interesting. We all leapt out, all the guys ran to lift the hood and look
at engine parts and shout things in Afrikaans. Meanwhile, I stood far off to
the side until the emergency was over and things were ok and we hopped back in
the vehicle and drove back for dinner.
The rest of the week, we worked with lots and lots of
animals at lots of different farms. We darted sable, moved them. I got to do
some pregnancy tests on cows via rectal exams. Yeah, that means putting most of
your arm inside the animal’s rectum to feel around for a fetus.
I got to practice my IV injections a lot on different
animals, but it took a lot of trials before I finally got it right, which was
really frustrating. We went to a game farm called Selati where Bossie had to
move sable and collar rhinos. Casual. All in a day’s work.
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| Pregnancy diagnosis |
We drove past a place called
Fawlty Towers that was a hotel/restaurant. For those of you who have never seen
this old BBC John Cleese tv show, watch an episode. I promise you won’t regret
it. I had kind of forgotten about this show for a while, but Mariah had
mentioned it one day and I think she’s the first person I’ve met in college who
has seen every episode/heard of Fawlty Towers. So it was fresh on my mind and
then I saw it. The next day, we drove past it on the other side, and I saw that
it had the signs for all the rewordings of Fawlty Towers, such as “Warty
Towels,” “Flowery Twats,” Fatty Owls,” “Farty Towels” and many more. I got a
kick out of that.
We went to a farm that had nyala and eland and sable and
giraffe, oh and ostriches too, but we never work with ostriches…but this farm
was owned by BJ Voerster’s family.
For those of you not up on your 20th century South African history,
he was an apartheid-era president of South Africa. I felt really conflicted
about being there and it made the whole race conflict/dynamics/apartheid legacy
very fresh on my mind. But more about that in another post about culture shock.
For those of you interested in history: BJ Voerster
Bossie has a bunch of lectures that he gives to students who
take his wildlife medicine course, and he emailed me all of them but since it
was one-on-one he made it more like a conversation so we got to talk about the
things that interested me the most. We talked about zoonotic diseases and how
they control them and how moving wildlife policies work and testing animals for
various diseases and the epidemiology practices he follows and the Kruger vets
follow. It was SO COOL. (Nerd alert, but it’s my passion, so no shame.)
One night I was walking to my chalet to go to sleep and a
loud sound of something crashing through the trees/grass in front of me shocked
me a little. I was nervous and fumbling to find my flashlight and turn it on,
so whatever it was was gone by the time I had it on. The next morning, I told Ben that I was
pretty sure there had been some impala outside room the night before, and he
said “impala? You sure?” and I was like well no, but I assumed they were...what
else would it be. And he responded with, “well the rhinos love to hang out
there, so it was probably the rhinos. Don’t worry. They’re shy, not aggressive.”
So much going to bed at about 8 or 9pm and waking up at 5am.
I love it actually. I have turned into my dad. It took a few days to get to the
point where that was normal, but now it is and I love it! Thanks, Dad! :)
The family have sixteen dogs collectively. That's a lot of dogs running around. But they're really well behaved and nice dogs. Four of them are little and indoor dogs. All the rest are border collies and outdoor dogs. One of them is very pregnant and she's such a sweetie pie. Can't wait to see her babies.
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| Rambo. He follows me everywhere. I tried working in my personal statement one afternoon, but he wouldn't get his head out of my notebook. :) |
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| Ok, so the farm is also a hunting farm, which is kinda weird to me...considering I'm here to do vet stuff. But whatever, I'm not the one doing the hunting. And I've learned a lot of interesting thigns about hunting culture that I'll have to think about and research. I've also learned a little bit about how hunting and conservation, if done properly, don't necessarily have to be at odds. Some food for thought. But anyway, the game lodge was literally cluttered with heads of animals. Most of them died by natural causes...but some of them were hunted and shot by people. And then they were stuffed and used to decorate the room. Literally everything is made from a tree, is a tree, or is an animal body part. There's a giraffe casually peering down from above. There are kudu, impala, waterbuck, springbok, warthogs, hyena, zebra, a whole cheetah. The backs of the chairs are made from crocodile skins. And the table is literally a tree sliced in half, flat side up. There are a couple trees growing in the middle of the room. |
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| Buffalo and wildebeest and porcupines. And the wildcat always sits on the perch in the corner. When she moves it freaks me out because none of these animals are supposed to be moving... |
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| Cupholders? made from Ostrich feet because...why not? |
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| Everyone wants a whole cheetah sitting in their dining room, right? |
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| Ben's Chopper |
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| Sunrise at the heli hanger |
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| View from my seat in the chopper... |
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| Kinda blurry view from the chopper. |
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| Ben flying the chopper and Bossie darting an animal from the chopper |
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| view from chopper again... |
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| Baby zebra orphan we had to take care of. |
At the end of the week Zander had to drive to Johannesburg
and he was the only other person staying at the lodge, so Ben and Bossie
decided to relocate me to the main house. Mr Osmers left for a trip to their
other farm a few hours away the same day, and Mrs. Osmers didn’t like being
alone in the house, so she wanted me to stay with her. And everyone thought it
would be safer that way. There is a big floor to ceiling gate in their house
between the first and second floors that she locks at night. We sleep in the
upstairs bedrooms several locked doors and gates away from the outside world.
Weird world it is here.
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