Saturday 22 June
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| Sunrise from the chopper |
Very early in the morning, at 5am, I met Ben and we drove to the chopper hanger, just a km or 2 down the really long driveway. He prepped and fueled the chopper while I admired the first glimpse of sunrise.
We then got in the chopper and flew for about 20 minutes straight towards the sunrise to an area of the Timbavati/Kruger where our first job for the day awaited us. (The Timbavati is privately owned by like twenty investors...it borders the Kruger with no fence between the two so animals can roam freely.) He landed and we shook hands with some park rangers and then they spoke for a few minutes in Afrikaans about the heightened poaching incidents of the last few days. When he's not flying a chopper for vet purposes or mass captures, he is hunting down poachers with his chopper. No joke. Coolest person ever!
We got back in the helicopter and began searching for rhinos. When we found about 11 of them, we landed, I got in the back of a pick up truck with a vet tech and a bunch of Park employees for heavy lifting. Then the vet got in the chopper with Ben and the lifted up into the air to go dart some rhinos. They darted two rhinos at a time, then those of us in the truck would follow the chopper to the site where the rhinos had lay down and then we would do our thing. This day's procedures were just microchipping the horns and clipping the ears of each rhino. We had to cover their eyes so they wouldn't freak out.
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| Herding rhinos with the helicopter |
One of the was not very immobilized by his dart, so he stood up and started running and everyone had to run away, there about 2-3 long minutes of panicked silence, then Ben snuck up behind him, threw his coat over the rhino's eyes and the rhino relaxed, the vet gave him an injection of ketamine and then he sat bag down, yielding to the drug and awaiting his turn to be microchipped and clipped and get his horn drilled for DNA sampling. We microchipped both horns for monitoring purposes. We clipped each rhino's ears in a unique pattern to give them identification markers for helicopter or distance viewing purposes. Or, sadly, if the rhino is found dead killed by poachers, it could be easily visually identified. We also connected little DNA samples from the rhinos by clipping their ears. This would be also used to confirm identity should the rhino be poached or poachers caught with horn with blood on it. We drilled a tiny hole in each horn - front horn and back horn. Someone would hold a sample collection cup under the drill site to collect the little swirls of rhino horn ($110,000/kg) just to have matching samples of the horns. Then we'd inject the microchip into each horn in this hole and then fill it up with glue and a twig to disguise the microchip hole, prevent it from falling out and make the rhino's horn look natural.
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| Drilling the horns |
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| Clipping the ears for marking |
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| Ear post clipping. I got to help a lot with this part. |
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| Time to wake up, buddy! |
One of the was not very immobilized by his dart, so he stood up and started running and everyone had to run away, there about 2-3 long minutes of panicked silence, then Ben snuck up behind him, threw his coat over the rhino's eyes and the rhino relaxed, the vet gave him an injection of ketamine and then he sat bag down, yielding to the drug and awaiting his turn to be microchipped and clipped and get his horn drilled for DNA sampling. We microchipped both horns for monitoring purposes. We clipped each rhino's ears in a unique pattern to give them identification markers for helicopter or distance viewing purposes. Or, sadly, if the rhino is found dead killed by poachers, it could be easily visually identified. We also connected little DNA samples from the rhinos by clipping their ears. This would be also used to confirm identity should the rhino be poached or poachers caught with horn with blood on it. We drilled a tiny hole in each horn - front horn and back horn. Someone would hold a sample collection cup under the drill site to collect the little swirls of rhino horn ($110,000/kg) just to have matching samples of the horns. Then we'd inject the microchip into each horn in this hole and then fill it up with glue and a twig to disguise the microchip hole, prevent it from falling out and make the rhino's horn look natural.
Kruger doesn't dehorn, which I think is stupid. They say it's not "natural" but neither is poaching. They say rhinos are born with horns and look dumb without them. But I say what looks better? An alive dehorned rhino or a dead rhino with its horn - and face - brutally hacked off? So since these particular rhinos were Timbavati/Kruger, there was no dehorning allowed (but on other farms, Bossie did dehorn rhinos). Dehorning isn't a very dangerous process to the animal. It's like cutting hair or fingernails. The only risk comes from sedating the animals during the process. The horn regrows completely every 4 years (~1kg/year).
Anyway, it was a busy day we kept going for many hours and I got to help put on surgical clamps and anti-maggot sprays and help with the whole ear clipping process. My hands and clothes were covered in rhino blood, but I really was living my dream so I didn't care too much. Actually, I didn't care at all. I felt like I was actually taking a stand and using my two hands to fight against rhino poaching.
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| The runaway rhino who didn't want to go to sleep. |
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| Me and my friend, the rhino cow. One of the happiest moments of my life... |
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| Rhinos are heavy. |
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| Olifants River...from the helicopter :) Remember way back when I went on safari and stayed there? |
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| View from the back of the chopper en route to the far away location |
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| Cool mountains from the chopper |
so! |
| Bossie and Ben in action |
| In the afternoon, Ben and I flew back, picked up another vet then flew for about 40 minutes to a faraway farm that had a wounded buffalo cow caught in a snare, and she and her calf were hiding behind a bush on a hillside. Ben and the vet darted her while I waited on the ground in a pick up truck with 4 different things to give her/do to her to clean the wound when she lay down because the chopper wouldn't be able to land on the hillside. It went really well! I got to clean the wound which went all the way around one of her back legs and was about an inch and a half deep. I put some hydrogen peroxide and some iodine in the wound, rubbed it around in there with my finger, sprayed with anti maggot spray. Gave her injections of vitamins and dewormer and then woke her up. She stood up and walked away barely even limping! Success? I think so! |
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| Cleaning the wound |
After that, we had to catch a sable bull on the mountain which was challenging in terms of driving up the mountain, loading him on (building so many muscles these weeks) and even more challenging in terms of riding down the mountain with a tranquilized sable bull on the bed of the pick-up truck. We put him in the field where he needed to be with cows since he was now considered sexually mature and healthy. Then Ben, Bossie and I flew back to the farm for dinner, my nightly TV session with Judy watching Seun de Laan (Afrikaans soap) and much needed sleep!
What a perfect day!
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