Archive for January 22nd, 2001
Day 19
Another gap-year student was visiting Hoedspruit for the day, so she took over at the butchery this morning. It was raining today, so Tyse put on a video of some unusual animal behavior - a buffalo taking on and winning against a lion, a leopard attempting to attack a porcupine, even a lioness who had adopted a young antelope as her own cub!
During the afternoon, Tyse talked about traps and snares. The figure-4 trap was an ingeniously simple trap to make in the wild, but you need some kind of box - you take a few straight twigs, and by making a few notches in the right place you can construct an unstable prop for a box (the twigs make the shape of a 4) which will collapse on your prey if they touch it. Knowledge of traps and snares is important for bush survival, but Tyse also pointed out another very good reason to learn about them - it will help you to spot traps made by illegal poachers, because you know what to look for and where. He’s clever, is Tyse. We also discussed general bush survival, including first aid.
Colin and Elisa arrived today, they are a couple of post-graduate students from the University of Pretoria, here to conduct a study on cheetah stress hormones in captivity. We had a good talk over a fire, and saw a couple of elephants at night.