Archive for January 30th, 2001
Day 27
I spent the morning looking after Allah, a female cheetah recovering from some Zolitol anesthetic. It took her about one and a half hours to fully waken, going through stages of twitching, spasms, heavy breathing, and finally raising her head, trying to focus on a blurry world. She is one of the cheetahs who was in quarantine (they are kept there for about 6 weeks to make sure there are no symptoms of the stomach bug) to one of the main camps.
After lunch we were moving some empty transit boxes for cheetahs from the quarantine area back to the project. They were damn heavy, designed for freight transport. We loaded one onto the back of each pickup truck, and tied it down. 2 people had to sit at the back of the pickup to keep the boxes (which were quite tall and narrow) from falling over.
I sat on the back of one of the trucks, one hand on the side of the truck and one hand steadying the box. The first truck sped off, and we followed behind. I really enjoyed the ride, leaning over the side and looking ahead. It wasn’t until we arrived back at the project (about a 40 minute drive) that I realised my face and teeth (I was smiling on the trip) was absolutely covered in a thick film of dust, kicked up by the first truck! That wasn’t so bad, because we all had to shower and wash our clothes anyway as part of the quarantine procedures. I still felt pretty stupid though.
We released Allah into her new camp at about 5:00pm. Apparently, in money terms, she is worth about US$50,000. To me, she is priceless.
Later in the day, the doc needed some blood samples from the blue cranes, so we rounded up as many as possible into the feeding cage, and closed the gate. Next was the really fun bit - catching them!
The technique was to get one arm around the wings (to stop them flapping) and neck (to stop them pecking your face off), and the other arm holding the feet (which were incredibly strong, and had sharp bits). For skinny looking birds, they sure as hell can put up a fight! We all had a few cuts and grazes by the end, but the doc managed to get a blood sample from all of them.
That finished off a hard day’s work.