Archive for February 5th, 2001
Day 33
Our feeding of the cheetahs went smoothly today, until we reached one camp where the cheetah didn’t come to the feeding-end of the enclosure. This was a worrying sign, normally she would always be there even before we arrived.
Juliette and Tania went into the enclosure to investigate, and after about quarter of an hour (it takes a long time because the enclosures are so huge and the undergrowth so abundant) they found her in a poor state. On close inspection, we found she was riddled with ticks all over her fur, which had sucked her blood until barely able to walk.
We radioed the doc, and finished the feeding, and returned with Dr Rogers to dart her. We carried her to the pickup truck, placed her on the back, and drove slowly to the hospital - I sat with her to make sure she didn’t slide around.
She was put on a drip, and we darted a second cheetah. Half a pint of blood was drawn from the second cheetah, and transfused into the sick one. With the blood, some warm-water bottles, and a good dose of tick spray, she made a good recovery.
In the afternoon we got reports that a hyena carcass and two sick vultures had been found at a nearby reserve. Concern was raised over this because the two vultures did not apparently have any wounds, which suggested poisoning.
We went straight there with Tyse and Martyn to investigate. One vulture was barely alive but vomiting and unable to move. The other was dead, and they had both definitely been poisoned. Poisoning is a persistent problem, apparently, because of farmers who put out poison (I’m not sure how legal that is here) to kill animals who might cause a problem. One theory is that the hyena was poisoned, and the vultures got secondary poisoning from eating the hyena carcass. Alternatively, the hyena died naturally (there were claw marks on it’s back) and the vultures have been poisoned elsewhere.
We took them all to the nearby Moholoholo rehabilitation centre, where the dead hyena and vulture were both frozen so that tests could be carried out later, and the other vulture was put into care.
Note: We heard some days later that the vulture survived, after having it’s system flushed with fluids to get rid of the poison.