A "Quiet" Week

June 16, 2012

Boy I’m glad I didn’t promise you all regular updates.  I’d have been made a liar this past week.  Compared to last week, this week has been remarkably quiet.  No more exciting, close calls with mambas and no cheetahs in the middle of the road.  Not that it’s been dull by any means.

This week there was a herder training where local herders came in to learn how to minimize human animal conflicts.  They had some interesting solutions.  Many of them focused on not getting paid enough to protect their animals from predators.  They brought up that it is dangerous to step between a predator and his prey.  Money is very different here, but the herders get paid about minimum wage for Botswana.

They also mentioned the herders need to be skilled in looking at spoor (animals tracks and sign) to determine what kind of predator is around and if it has designs on the herd.  And they need to be skilled in caring for their animals.

Also present were a rancher, a vet, and a traditional San healer.  I’d have loved to have chance to speak with them more, but the day was packed for all of us.

I also got to practice my goat wrangling by helping the CCB team to vaccinate, ear tag, and dip their goats.  I can still give SQ injections, yay me!  In all honesty, though, the little Boer goats are adorable.

Most of the week was spent preparing for the herder training or in spot checking.  Each cheetah’s spots are like a finger print, so you can tell them apart based on that.  Spot checking means looking at all the pictures from the camera traps and deciding if it’s the dominant cheetah in that area or if it’s someone else.  If it’s someone else, have you seen them before?  So, I can identify at least five cheetahs on sight now.

Other than that, we also visited the San craft stores in Ghanzi and D’kar, where they display the magnificent art and crafts of the San people.  They have the most beautiful, colorful art and make crafts out of ostrich egg shell, recycled paper, metal, and other fantastic things.

Caoilfhionn and I also had introduction to cheetah scat testing.  We dissected the scat for any hairs, bone, or vegetation.  Then we isolated 10-12 hairs, shoved them into a Pasteur pipette using thumb forceps, drew up enough beeswax to cover them, then let the wax harden.  After that, we cut cross sections using a scalpel and glued them to a slide.  When they dried, we looked at the cross-section of the hair and tried to match it with the local animals that cheetah eat.  It was interesting.  Reminded me that I love lab and field work, but that I’d really rather be outside.

But other than that, it’s been a pretty “quiet” week. :D