Report from Dana Vogt - 2 weeks Harnas (30.08. – 15.09.2006)
The backyard of the farm house was at th ebeginning of September the kingdom of Trust (Lion) and Pride (Cheetah). If they did not sleep totally relaxed in a corner they were full of mischief.Trust loves it, like his older brother Zion, to attack the volunteers from behind to pnich their bottom. Pride is a little williwaw. She entertains herself by keeping the house cats busy or by fighting with Trust over his lunch-bone. In the afternoon we pften took out both for a walk at the airstrip - a highlight for Pride who could not get enough of running around! Trust needed some encouragement to do some fitness... Trust lives now with his big brother Zion, as he was getting to strong for wrestling fun with the tiny Pride.
Zion shared the garden and the garage forecourt with Goeters and a black dog. As it is still a lot of fun for Zion to scare the volunteers one had to be careful by walking through his territory. But it´s only pretending as he is as he loved to get attention. We took him out for walks aswell and together with his black friend and Marlices Tokkolos he discovered carefully the area. He used to play through the fence with his younger brother - who directly after he moved in took command. These youngsters!
Tara the dog lost some weight since last September but there is still a lot to do! To bring her closer to people and to make her move more we renovated her doghouse and placed it neared to the Lapa gestellt - which delighted the tortoises and the warthhogs who checked the new accomodation on the market.
It was again the time of the year to count and to number the tortoises - and to free them from ticks. It took half of the day to collect the 53 tortoises and the ticks were a real pleasure... Unbelievable how many ticks a single tortoise can have and how big they can get...
Alois-Bonie-Duma-Zita
The four cheetahs live together near the food-prep-area. Bonie and Alois are still very shy but Zita became much calmer after living together with Duma constantly. Duma is just amazing and loves it to be brushed or simply to have human company.
Duma-Run
When Frikkie was there we took Duma out for a run to the airstrip. There she tries to catch plastic bottle (filled with some small stones) which is pulled by Pickup. This gives you an idea about how fast a cheetah can run- because Frikkie never had a chance with the car against Duma - she always catched the bottle!
Bad Taste – Party
Volunteers never have problems finding a nice idea entertain themselves so we decieded to celebrate a “Bad Taste – Party” - Dresscode - as horrible as possible! We had a lot of fun and it brought the group closer together. If there would have been a price for the best „bad – Outfit“ , for sure Juan (the new Lapa-Manager) would have been the lucky one to get it - thanks to a dress and wig from Marieta.
One of the highlights of these two weeks was definitly the cleaning of all the lion- wild dog- and cheetahcamps. Together with Arno and Frikkie small groups of volunteers entered the camps to collect bones. Especially the lion camps with 1 up to 5 big lions were quite a surge of adrenalin. After the work was done we counted luckily again as many volunteers as we hoped and we had a lot of fun!
Football
Every Sunday at 6 p.m. it´s Soccer-Cub time - all volunteers against the Harnas-Team. Until mid of September the volunteers were quite successful, what may be due to the amount of about 20 volunteers against 10 Harnas players. But as soon as the Harnas-Team recruited reinforcement = Zion, Trust and Zibi, there was no chance left for the volunteers and the Harnas-World-Cup went back to the Harnas-Team.
Nikita is still caring very well for her three babies.
At the beginning of August a cheetah baby was found in the camp of the wild cheetahs. Cleo(-patra) imoved to the farm house and will be raised by hand. Being about 5 weeks old she was still very waggly when she made her first visits to the Lapa went for a walk in the back yard.
The meerkats-clan who digged their way out of the enclosure a long time ago, is living free on the farm and visited us when we checked the fenses of the camps.
