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!