Feeding and Pooping

Today was more of the same, but I thought I’d share a couple photos from feeding the cheetahs in the Bellebenno camp today. We toss the meat over the fence after luring them into the feeding pens. They grab it and usually run away and hide to eat it. Even though your hands get nice and bloody from the raw meat, it is quite fun to do. While they are all locked up feeding is when we drive around the edge of the camp searching for poop. Because the cheetahs had a “starve day” yesterday, meaning they were not fed, there was a lot less poop to pick up today, but do not fret, there will be plenty more to come!

I took an inventory of the scat I’ve been collecting and I realize that I am sampling from too many cheetahs! I never thought they would be so cooperative here at CCF and so willing to put in the extra work for my study. Anne (Director of Research) had given me a completely different impression when we were planning my trip here: the opposite in fact. When I completed the CITES paperwork for importing blood samples I said I would only have 30 samples, which means 30 cheetahs, and at the time both myself and Adrienne (my Smithsonian advisor) thought I was being ambitious. It’s a good problem to have I guess… So much poop!!

Bellebenno

My daily routine now consists of two major scat walks (through the two Eland enclosures) and a scat drive (around the 57ha Bellebenno camp). These are the three camps in which the cheetahs are being fed marked food, such that we are able to identify their poop just by looking at it (or pulling it apart as is most often the case). The Bellebenno farm is a piece of property that used to be a game farm, but was acquired by CCF to be used for “soft releases”. There are plenty of oryx, eland, giraffe, zebra, kudu, warthogs, etc inside of the Bellebenno farm. Also inside, are three cheetah “enclosures”, one of which is the 57 hectare camp that is home to 8 mid-aged female cheetahs. These girls are practically wild, because they only see humans once a day when they are fed. I get to be one of those humans and I love it. Every time we drive through the Bellebenno farm property to head to the cheetah camp is like going on a game drive. Yesterday I saw an aardvark!! Amazing. No photo to prove it, but it was epic. After we feed the girls, we take a drive around the fenceline and these girls are so fabulous that we usually find scat (aka. poop) from at least 6 of the 8 on any given day. Considering the vast amount of space we don’t search, this is incredible. Today, we found samples from all 8 girls. A fabulous day.

Because of my project, I get to be on cheetah husbandry every day, and I work directly with either the head cheetah keeper, Juliette, or the assistant cheetah keeper, Ryan. They have both been so amazing considering the amount of extra work that was put on their daily plate because of my project. Major acknowledgements will be required. I have so many samples already from the three camps I have no idea if I will fit everything into the coolers I brought. Things have been so successful I really could not have wished for things to go better. I will be sad when these first few weeks are over and I am not longer on husbandry daily… although we need to start collecting from some males too (so I can’t head to the genetics lab just yet): right now Phoenix is the only one! I’ve got my eye on “the scientists”. J

Here’s my best cheetah photo from today:

Preparing Enclosures for Sample Collection

The last two days have been hard work. In preparation to start collecting identifiable fecal samples from the center cats for my dissertation research, it was first necessary to go in and clear out all of the old fecals and bones from the enclosures. This might not seem too difficult, except that these are not your typical enclosures you might see at a zoo or even SCBI. There are two enclosures that together are called “Elands” and they house the “retired” females. These females have seen more years than your typical wild cheetah expects to survive. Some have scars, or in the case of Amani a missing eye, but they are all beautiful in their own ways. Many of these cats I remember from my previous trip to CCF and I even have photos of them. One of the enclosures is a bit bigger than the other (approx. 20 acres). This enclosure houses 5 females: Sandy, Dusty, Blondie, Amani and Samantha. The second enclosure (approx. 12 acres) has four females: Nina, Rosy, Misty and Solo. These lovely ladies are some of the first that we are going to begin doing collections on. I’m exhausted from all of the walking, bending, lifting (of large bins full of smelly poop and bones), that clearing out these enclosures entailed. They are not done on a regular basis. The good news is, we started marking the ladies food with colored glitter and lentils this morning so we can identify each individual’s poo, even though they share the same enclosure. You can see our Gater filled with the old poo and bones and an action shot of me putting lentils into/onto the meat below.

Aside from all of the tough work, last night I was eager to get off my feet and volunteered for a game drive. A game drive entails driving a large circuit of land and identifying all of the species of animals you see and any identifiable demographics (male vs. female, adult vs. subadult vs. calf, etc). It was going all well and good until our car broke down in the middle of the “big field”. The drivers cell phone had almost no battery and it appeared we weren’t within range for his radio. I was a little worried because we were in an open vehicle, in the Rhino reserve adjacent to CCF, at dusk. That is no place to be stranded and most definitely not a safe place to walk through. Luckily, after a good 10 minutes or so, he got through to someone on the phone who came and rescued us. While we waited I took the opportunity to jump out and get a photo.

Tomorrow begins another day of scouting for poop at 7:30AM!

Arriving at CCF

Travel

The flight from JFK airport to Johannesburg is 16 hours long. They feed you about 1-2 hours after take-off (lunch/dinner), then they tell you that they will feed you breakfast 2 hours before landing. That’s about 10-12 hours in the middle that you don’t eat. They expect you to “sleep” to prepare you for being in South African time, and believe me, I was exhausted because I only got an hour nap the night before heading to JFK, but I have a terrible time trying to sleep on planes. I was prepared though… I took 2 melatonin supplements, a Xanax, and drank two brewskis (Castle Lager and a Castle Light). With these powers combined and my natural level of exhaustion, I’d say I managed about 6 hours of sleep. However, I woke about every hour and the quality of sleep was not great. I had prepared for the “hungry time” in those middle hours by buying a sandwich at JKF that I stowed in my backpack. Unfortunately, the sandwich was disgusting. I didn’t even eat half before throwing the rest away. Good thing I also had trail mix which held me over just fine. All in all, the flight was alright. I got up frequently and drank lots of water. The international terminal in Joburg makes me want to spend a lot of money… but I didn’t. They have so much cool African stuff! I walked around a lot of the shops and scoped out some items I might think about buying on the return trip. Even though my layover was over 4-5 hours, the time passed quickly enough. Then, it was off to Namibia! That flight is only 2 hours, but they feed you again. It was a chicken curry, rice and veg with a pasta salad on the side and chocolate mousse for dessert. Yum! I had a window seat this time to check out the landscape, and I guess I forgot from last time how boring it is to fly over the Kalahari desert. You are too high to see any animals, and it just looks like a flat stretch of dirt and bush. Unfortunately, having switched to a window seat meant being towards the back of the plane, which meant being towards the end of the line for customs. I waited almost an hour in that line and wanted to faint. I was overdressed and hot, and my backpack was very heavy. I was also worried that my ride (who was picking me up at the airport) would leave without me, because by the time I got through and got my baggage (no lost luggage, yay!) I was an hour later than planned. When I first walked out and saw all the people with their signs (for this safari or that one or the other one), I did not see the guy who was supposed to be holding my name. Luckily, when I was about to panic, I saw this ghetto scribble that said Ashley Franklin, way towards the back. Relief. This guy was really nice too. Not like some of the creeper taxi drivers I remember from last time. Now I know why CCF continues to use this guy.

We picked up another new intern in Windhoek at his guesthouse and then we took off for CCF. The drive is about 4 hours, so by the time we arrived it was already about 8pm (local time). Luckily, they saved a dinner plate for us (yes, just one we had to share, but better than starving!). To my relief also, I was put into a dorm room, which means I have access to hot showers. J The bad news is that out of the 5 adapter plugs I have, none of them are the right one for the one in the dorms, which means I have to go all the way to the “main building” to charge anything. Also, there is no WiFi in the dorm. Bummer. But again, the main building has WiFi, so all is not lost. 

Meeting the People

I did not buy beer on my way here for fear of arriving and having people think I was some kind of alcoholic, but when I arrived, the other interns/staff were getting tipsy. Apparently there was some kind of celebration going on. There was cake too, but I have no idea what it said. All I wanted to do was get into my bed, but I was invited to join their party, which was moving out to the site I believe is called “Lightfoot”, which is the student camp we stayed in last time I was at CCF with the wolfpack. I didn’t want to say no and look like an anti-social, and I figured it would give me a chance to get to know some people, so semi-reluctantly I hiked out there with them. We built a bonfire (because it was friggin’ cold out!) and people proceeded to drink A LOT. Holy crap…. and I was worried I would look like an alcoholic. Well, I had one beer and a caramel vodka shot, but only because I was too sober to be around people that drunk, lol. Everyone is super nice though and we had a lot of fun. There have been improvements to the site since I was last there. They put in a solar panel, so the “shacks” now have electricity! The showers out there still require the lighting of a fire under the water tank though… again, happy I got a dorm room. I think I finally got to bed around 1am. Considering I got up at 7 this morning, it is no surprise I am tired, but no worries: I will be in bed early tonight and nothing (except something involving real cheetahs) will keep me from it!

Day 1

My first day has been great. I got up early (like I mentioned) to head over to the genetics lab to get my reagents into the freezer. Kaz (a staff member) brought me over there so I wouldn’t be a random intruder to others that I haven’t met yet. When we came back to the main building, guess who we ran into? Laurie Marker herself. She came and introduced herself to me, at which point I had to remind her that we’ve met three times before and she knows who I am… hopefully after these two months I won’t have to remind her anymore! Then, she invited me to join her for a bit. We went and had some coffee with some special guests and then we watched a scat detection dog demonstration (being put on for the guests). I might actually get to work with one of these dogs because some of the “enclosures” at CCF are actually quite large (as well as maybe some work in the field), and I have a lot of poo to collect in the next two months. After that, I was passed off to another staff member who gave me and the other new intern, Julian, a vet student from France, a tour of the place (though I didn’t see much more than I hadn’t already seen, but this is Julian’s first time at CCF). Then it was brunch. After brunch, we got to tag along to see a cheetah feeding (of the cats in the main pens around the building). This is something we will get to assist with in the future, but today we were like tourists. After the feeding, I met with Laurie again, this time with Anne (the supervisor of the genetics lab) and we actually talked about my project and what needs to happen with that. There is another student here that has to do a bunch of PCR in the next two weeks before she leaves, and then there is a new staff member (someone who will be working in the genetics lab also) who needs orienteering, so Anne actually doesn’t want me in the lab the next two weeks. She thinks it will be too crazy (plus, I guess there is only one thermal cycler, so that would create conflicts). Instead, she wants to start me out collecting some of my poo samples and doing other fun intern things (husbandry, etc) for the first two weeks. Postponing my PCR/sequecing/lab work to work more with the actual cheetahs? I am TOTALLY ok with this! So it was been a good first day. 

Preparing for Departure

I'm taking the day off from work/school today to run all of my last minute errands and pack my bags. I leave for Namibia tomorrow morning from New York! My friend Marie is going to drive me up there and then she's headed to Albany to see her partner, so that worked out well. I'm a little concerned because she seems to be coming down with a cold, but lets hope she's feeling ok for the trip. I think she was going to see the doctor this morning *fingers crossed*. Luckily, when I return I fly into Dulles, so no long drive involved.

Last time I went to Namibia for 3 weeks or so, I forgot to pack my eyeglasses (or spare contact lenses). For the first few nights, I took my contacts out at bedtime and just hoped that I didn't rip one or there was no reason I needed to see in the middle of the night. But then, with all of the sand that you couldn't ever seem to get 100% off of you out in the Namib desert (and grit = more likely to tear a lense), I made the decision to leave my contacts in permanently, even for sleeping. I would douse my eyes in solution every morning. Eventually my contacts became one with my eyes. When I returned to the US and took my contacts out for the first time, my eyes wanted to scream and die. Then I was in glasses for a couple days as my eyes recovered. Needless-to-say, I will not be making this mistake again. I need to go pick up my brand new pair of glasses today from Lenscrafters (round 2 - long story...), so this way, if my GPC (giant papillary conjuntivitis from last summer) comes back again, I can go sans contacts if needed. I also have new daily contact lenses, so I don't have to worry about putting an old, gritty pair back in: a new pair every day!

Yesterday, I taught myself how to lock my laptop to a desk. It was in the intern/volunteer manual to have one, so I got one. I might need to go buy pants today. I've gained some weight this summer and my pants aren't fitting so good... whoops! Here's hoping that I can lose a little weight in Africa this time considering I will not be eating fast food or dining out. I am looking forward to eating some game meat while I'm there. Mmmm oryx steak!

Time to get busy.

Jagluiperd

This marks the beginning of the blog that I have created to keep everyone posted on my weekly doings while I am abroad in Namibia working on my dissertation research at the Cheetah Conservation Fund. I still have 10 days before I leave, but I will be abroad for 2 months, and much is left to get in order before I'm ready. Though the official language in Namibia is English, there is a very large population that speaks Afrikaans, so I have been working on some vocabulary and phrases in preparation. "Jagluiperd" is the Afrikaans word for "cheetah", so I found it to be an appropriate name for this blog. I will try to keep my posts weekly, and somewhat interesting, but I make no promises as I will be working in the genetics lab for the majority of my trip: extracting DNA, running PCR and sequencing reactions, which isn't really very exciting to talk about. Let's hope I also get to have some fun animal experiences while I am there to spice up this blog a bit!