Sleeping With Rudie, Walking With KiKi, and Other Stories From Namibia

Sunday July 20

Yesterday evening Rudie, the owner of the farm, took all of us volunteers out to watch him try to dart an eland with a broken horn. He is a human medical doctor who has now converted to wild animals and was going to show us the practical part of his immobilization presentation. We drove around in the backs of three trucks looking for the eland or for their runaway zebras which he also wanted to dart and bring back. It was a nice drive, like a sunset boat cruise at the cottage, and I enjoyed the view even though we didn't see anything, ie we didn't get to see him dart anything. Instead, we came back to the presentation room and he showed us three very technical powerpoints on concentrations, dosages, and volumes of sedatives, tranquilizers, and the drugs that reverse them. Detailed instructions on what to use for each type of carnivore. Stories galore. Demonstration of how to use the dart gun and load the dart. Interesting but way too long. Cut into dinner!!

And then it was a bit of a rush because I was sleeping with Rudie the adorable eight month old baboon last night. Around 7pm when the food preparation group was making his bottle I went and filled two containers with warm water. They lured him out of the little cage all the babies sleep in to stay warn and I gave him the bottle while he sat in the bath. He gets so tiny when he is wet! It was adorable. And he was so good, just sat there and let me put water and shampoo on him. It was really hard to get him rinsed but I tried my best. Then the girls that were helping me threw two towels on me and picked him up and put him on me. He was soaking! I had to make sure to dry his tail really well too. I couldn't really get the diaper on (you have to first poke a hole for the tail, then try to put it on him while he is clinging to you and balance his empty nighttime bottle between his face and your chest all the while) and he started to scream cause he was cold (let's face it I took him out of a bath, he was wet, and it's pretty much sub zero here) so Liz, a girl who knows him well quickly put on both diapers for me. Then he got zipped into my new fleece jacket and I was sent on my way to my tent. Of course he started screaming and trying to get out the top as soon as we were on our own. It was pitch dark and all I could feel were little baboon fingernails around my face so I made Liz come and calm him down. She said I just had to hug him and walk as fast as I could to my very far away tent. She was right - he quickly calmed down and became only cold and afraid and dependent on me instead of mad at me.

Unzipping and rezipping a tent with a shivering 8 pound baboon in your shirt is pretty tough! But we made it and made it into my sleeping bag. He crawled around for a bit checking things out. He kind of play bit me once which of course put me on edge for the entire night. (I was totally fine.) Then I smelled the baboon poo. We hadn't been there more than 20 minutes when he had not only shit, but also managed to get his tail out of both diapers, pretty much guaranteeing it was about to fall off. Fantastic! So our next adventure was to get his diaper changed. I picked him up, held him with one hand and threaded his tail through the hole with the other. I should have paid better attention in babysitting class because I had no idea how the diaper flaps worked. By the time I figured it out the rascal had pulled his tail out. A few tries later we had success, and the second diaper (you have to put two on because he can take it off if there is just one) was even easier. Niki came back around then and helped us get tucked into bed. Rudie was such a sweetheart then, he went down to the bottom of my sleeping bag where it was warmest and curled up around my feet. He stayed there quite a while and then spent some time along my back, and some sitting by my stomach. He moved every 20 minutes or so so I didn't get much sleep, but it was pretty precious. At one point he had his little feet hooked into the waistband of my jeans (I wanted as much as possible between us in case he caused trouble) and his hands down on the bottom part of my legs. Every once in a while, just as I was drifting off to sleep, he'd shift a bit and tickle me and wake me up. Once he crawled out and sat by my head. I had to sit up then because any size baboon sitting on my pillow over my head is not okay with me! But he was half asleep so I just pushed him back into the sleeping bag. There is really no better way to describe him than as a little monkey!He sucked on his bottle the whole time - never lost it. He woke up at 5:30 and I likely could have got him to go back to sleep but I was a bit tired of it all by then and I didn't want him to jump on Niki so I took him back to the cage with the other babies. That was an experience in itself since it was still dark out, I couldn't wear my glasses in case he grabbed them, I couldn't move anywhere without him clinging to my front (he was cold and is scared of the dark) so putting in contacts was out of the question and getting my shoes on was a struggle. I wrapped him in a towel and off we went on the 7 minute walk. We made it, got inside, I got his diapers off, and I put him on the ground in front of the babies. As soon as I opened their door a crack he slithered under and into the arms of Rafiki, another baby. Very cute. I didn't worry about him being cold anymore! I wanted to get lots of pictures of this but the whole thing was so chaotic that I just got a couple of the bath time.

This morning all of the volunteers went out in trucks to watch them release the newest family member - a young cheetah - into her new enclosure. They pick her up from a farmer yesterday. There really wasn't much to see but it was a big production and a lot of song and dance. After, my team was on enclosure patrol again....and the electric fence wasn't working for the lions! So I had to call back to camp using the emergency cell phone and get the hell away. Luckily all of the lions were still inside. (let's face it, they have a pretty good life there, why would they leave?!)

After muffin break we got to go on a cheetah walk with Kiki. A Bushman named Johannes took us and unfortunately he didn't speak a ton of English. First we had to go drive inside her enclosure and convince her to hop into a cage in the back of the truck. Not easy, but okay we (he) did it. Then we drove to the area we walk in and all looked around to make sure there were no other animals there because we didn't want her to run away and chase them. So far so good. Then we had to convince her to get out of her cage. Didn't think that was going to happen but eventually she started walking. Then we just walked along with her. It was so beautiful. She is tame, you can pet her when she is just sitting still, and we got some good pictures of us with her just in the wild. She didn't really want to walk where Johannes wanted her to go, but I figured that was okay because she is a cheetah after all.

Then all hell broke loose. Two ostriches appeared (we later learnt they were hand raised on the farm) and of course Kiki saw them. Johannes started running full tilt to try to scare the ostriches away. I don't think he really did anything but luckily they saw Kiki in time and ran away flapping their useless wings. By this time we were running super late and now that she was distracted by Kobe beef she wasn't going to settle for the shitty frozen month old chicken nugget she gets every day that Johannes was using to try to get her to go back to the car. He told Matt to go get the car and drive it around to us (this is when we were doing the photoshoot). Kiki was walking again by the time the car got there so Johannes told us to get in and he kept walking with her. All of a sudden Sable starts banging on the roof of the cab which is usually the signal to stop, and I was in the passenger seat. Sable shouts down that Kiki is going after another ostrich and to pass her camera up. And sure enough a few seconds later Kiki bolts after the ostrich (unclear if this is the same one or a new one) and they run for at least 20 seconds and according to Sable's pictures got less than a meter away! It was pretty spectacular. But luckily the ostrich escaped. We figured after all of that Kiki would be tired and ready to go home, but no. She still refused to go. We lifted the crate out of the car. No. Then she walked away so had to lift it back in the car (very heavy) and drive to her. Then back out of the car, with string attached and Matt holding it from a distance so she wouldn't know we were going to trap her. Nothing worked. Finally Johannes called Cila who is like the manager here who came with a longer rope and more fresher meat. Finally worked. Then we had to drive her back inside her enclosure and convince her to get out. Would you believe after all that she wanted to stay in her cage and we had to coax her out yet again? Insane! Cila has now grounded her indefinitely and says there will never be another cheetah walk again. Apparently she is always hard to get to come back....

So that is the excitement of the hour! This afternoon we had to clean the chicken and bunny enclosures but that was easy. Then I thought I had an hour to myself but turns out there was a 5pm presentation on NamibRand, a private reserve that we partner with, as well as one on snakes, because Cila likes them and it was her turn for the presentation. This was a bit delayed considering we were sprinting through open plains just a few hours earlier in pursuit of a cheetah!

Now it's very late - almost 9 (!!!) - so time for bed, sans monkey! Will post this tomorrow!

Here are a couple of pictures I snapped on the enclosure walk. Obviously none of the lions! (Cheetahs and leopards only!)