Site Guide Week 4 and a half (last week)

Well howdy y 'all!

I"m back to report on the happenings that have happened up until now, where I am at the end of my first short course.

I did some more welcoming on Monday and we had some more class on Tuesday.  On Wednesday morning, we arrived at the academy and we were informed that we'd be doing game capturing for the rest of the week.  We headed into the bushveld to help Thaba Manzi set up the boma which wasn't hard work but it's all about precision.  The poles first had to be planted, the wires had to be attached on the bottom and top of the poles and then the sails had to be hooked onto the wire.

We had to report on duty at 5:30 A.M. on Thursday, it was still dark and cold, not the best time to have teenagers awake since we're pretty grumpy because we couldn't get in a full shift of sleep but this morning was different, the excitement was thick in the air.  On this day, the first day of actual capturing, we caught gnous (Blou wildebeeste) and Zebras.  At first, I mostly didn't see much since I was at the furthest gate from the truck.  We had to listen for the helicopter's siren and once he let the alarm scream, we had to run at full speed to close the sails.  A very important part of the job is to NOT BE SEEN by the animals, otherwise they would show us what reverse gear looks like.  After the first few catches, the students had to switch, which meant I could go closer to the truck, which meant I could actually see the animals.

There I had a real close encounter with a gnou, whom decided to turn around and gun for the group I was standing with.  The one guy jumped behind the sail by going right, the other one by going left and the one Thaba Manzi worker actually jumped under the sail, leaving the boma entirely.  I froze, I stood there with a branch in my hand and real big eyes.  Luckily, he took a left turn (as Bubba J would say) and ran past me.  I also bought my first piece of land when running with the sail, I tripped over a random stem sticking out of the ground right after another guy fell over the same stick.  He recovered by bouncing off the ground like Kung Fu Panda and I recovered by doing a Chuck Norris like summersault on the ground.

The Friday, we had to be there again at 5:30 but this time the excitement had died out and we were all just tired but once we were back in the field and the first chase came in, the adrenalin was pumping again.  We caught Zebras, Blesbuck and Gemsbuck.  Once the Blesbuck were in the second last box, we closed the curtain and I was peeking through a hole in the sail and one blesbuck saw me and tried to storm me but I just closed the hole as well as my eyes and it ran past, blessedly.  Had an off weekend, which I used to sleep, as in, the whole weekend long.

The front of the boma, leading into the truck.

Footnote: Animals (mostly male) had to be taken out so new one's could be brought in since severe inbreeding was starting to appear or in cases like the zebra, there were too few females with one male, so the males had to be thinned out.

Week 5, which consisted out of our 2 last days here at Site guide, they were used to round off any remaining work, writing tests and being assessed by Cobus, our local animal genius.

Next chapter? Species care at the Wildlife Centre, where we'll be moving after lunch.  I heard our first task will be to clean the Avery.  Uhm, sounds exciting...