Friday 11th May
Dear Diary.
Today was an ordinary day at Harnas. Except, we had a new arrival. A baby spotted wild cat weighing only about 400 grams became the latest addition to the Harnas family much to the delight of the working guests. It is the smallest and cutest kitty on the farm but very shy.
Elsewhere, Zebe the Zebra was up to his old tricks sampling the odd working guest walking past. Everyone is learning not to bother him.
Bonds between the animals and the working guests are strengthening every day and as the bonds tighten the scratches and bruises are increasing. But it’s all part of the Harnas experience.
Saturday 12th May
Dear Diary,
Today was a very interesting day as all the working guests had a mini sports day. It resulted in 4 teams going head to head in many different games such as wheelbarrow race, spitting Springbok poo the furthest, sack races, throwing eggs and finishing in a game where we had to get a toffee out of a bowl of cow flour only using our mouths (you can imagine what we all looked like afterwards).
Our evening also had a twist to it, we had our usual Lapa dinner, however we had to dress up as our favorite animal so we had many people dressing up as our Harnas animals, resulting in a lot of us becoming a pride of lions.
At the end of our evening we found out the results to our sports day with the Fukarwee Birds and Def Leopard drawing so they had to give us a performance, The Fukarwee Birds did their rendition of The Birdie Song with the last line – And shake your bum just like Juans bum! Then we had Def Leopards shortened rendition of the Lion King (Their singing actually scared guests away from the Lapa!) All in all they were good performances they were both awarded a Lapa breakfast.
Tuesday 15th May
Dear Diary,
Today was the last day of 8 of the working guests. They spent the day saying goodbye to the animals and memorizing Harnas. None of them wanted to leave.
We took the baby baboons for a play on the lawn and Ieta fell into the fishpond. She wasn’t too happy to be wet but soon recovered. The other babies were much more careful after seeing what had happened to her.
Some of the working guests went game counting in the afternoon which involved sitting silently in a hide watching the waterholes and recording what came to drink. Others took Cleo and Pride the cheetahs for a walk. They were very lazy and curled up under a tree for a rest. It is still good for them to have a change of scenery though.
Friday 18th May
Dear Diary,
Today we went on a cheetah walk and it was very enjoyable, Pride and Cleo were very happy being their usual selves chasing bottles.
It also has been decided between us working guests that warthogs should have their own enclosure because they are always chasing people, slobbering and biting the back of our legs
Today Poepie was very well behaved! Only joking! He was very naughty as he went for Christina who hastily left his cage
However in the evening Schalk and Jo had to run to the rescue of a sick cat which was having problems walking and was clearly in pain so we will have to keep updated on what is happening to our cat.
Saturday 19th May
Dear Diary,
The arrival of some new working guests calls for a bonding activity. And what better way to bond than to be dropped off in the middle of the bush and told to find our own way to camp? Two vague and slightly cryptic clues were our only instruments of navigation. We were eased in with a long trek along a straight road and began to feel confident that we could crack the code and reach our destination. Then came the instruction to walk through the bush! We had no compass so proceeded in a very wiggly line. All the while the sun is sinking lower in the sky and some of us feared a night in the bush. After much discussion about which way to go we heard something. The miraculous sound of a truck on a road. We had made it! Or so we thought. An unfortunate error led us to the tree house and we were sure that victory was ours. But where was everybody?
As we sat contemplating the route we had taken the ground starting trembling with the sound of horses hooves. Suddenly, in a cloud of dust, a herd of wild horses came to drink at the water hole. Our group sat in awed silence as the wild horses drank against the back drop of the setting sun. Better than a Lapa breakfast any day.
Eventual rescue followed and we were led to the correct campsite where food and drinks were waiting. We were all very relieved and proud to have survived Harnas Survival.
Sunday 20th May
Dear Diary,
We are having very strange weather at the moment the wind has made it almost impossible to visit our animal enclosures as the sand is blowing into our eyes and we cannot see a single thing at all! All this blustery weather resulted in our picnic outing with our lions being cancelled, as it would not have been enjoyable for both the working guests and our two lions.
All this resulted in a very lazy Sunday afternoon where most of us relaxed inside our rooms from the safety of all this strange weather (and to recover from survival the day before!)
However our evening had to be one of the funniest evenings as the majority of working guests squashed into Jo and Schalks bedroom to sit round the TV and have a movie night. So all the working guests picked a completely educational, smart, intelligent film… Yes that’s right we picked The Lion King! Which resulted us and Jo singing along to all the songs and a few of the girls getting teary at Mufasa dieing! All in all a fantastic evening! Jo teased and said she wondered if it was movie night or karaoke night!
However the morning after disaster struck in the form of us finding our beautiful Golden Falcon Sultan dead. We discovered a Jennet had got into his cage in the night and attacked him, leaving a completely upset team 4!
