Cleo, Pride and Hannelie
During January the decision was made to move Cleo an Pride to the old lions enclosure near the car park and put Hannelie out with the wild cheetahs. The moving of Cleo and Pride was no problem at all.
| But relocating Hannelie was a bit more exiting. After preparing the dart gun Juan and a group of volunteers headed to the enclosure where they had been unsuccseful in naturally capturing Hannelie the day before. After correcting his aim, Juan let off a single shot that hit Hannelie perfectly, however she immediately ran up the platform that is over 3 meters high. After a few tense moments Juan and the volunteers decided to climb up the platform and carry her down to avoid any injuries. Hannelie was then succesfully transported out to the wild cheetahs and has been living with them happily for the past 2 weeks. We think she will enjoy the peace and less human interest. |  |
A wild cheetah
After terrorizing both game and humans on the Harnas property for months the wild cheetah has now been captured and is currently in an enclosure on the side of the other wild cheetahs. On a seemingly normal morning both the enclosure patrol team and the team walking Cleo and Pride headed off on their daily walk. After noticing fresh tracks the enclosure team was shocked to see a wild cheetah walking in the distance. At that moment the team which was out for a walk with Cleo and Pride came around the corner and also saw the cheetah. After some discussion the wild dogs were all moved into a smaller part of their enclosure and the cheetah was ushered through an open gate by volunteers on all sides.
A cage was fetched from the courtyard and then Frickie, Ulla and a bunch of volunteers cornered the cheetah until they were close enough to throw some blankets over him and got him into the cage. The future plans for the cheetah are not yet decided.
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Lost Lost arrived on Harnas last September after her mother was killed and she almost died of dehydration and malnutrition. On Harnas she was bottle fed milk by the volunteers and could often be found sleeping with the domestic cats and dogs for company at night. We had some major problems with her eating meat. We tried everything we could for weeks but she lived from kitty milk, dog and catfood. Strangest leopard ever!!! Thankfully she finally tried for the first time the nicely served meat and decided to upgrade her taste! Now she is a normal leopard and we sigh in relief. Although Lost has had no training by her mother her hunting skills seem very much intact. She loves to play with the volunteers by quietly stalking them and then pouncing on them. Everyone agrees that Lost is the feistiest baby leopard ever seen on Harnas! |
Rudolph
Born around Christmas 2007
| Rudolph is a Blesbock that was found on the airstrip (by volunteer named Pippy) where he was huddling against his mother who had been killed during the night by a wild cheetah. He could barely walk and still had his umbilical cord on. Since that day he thrived at his new home at Harnas where he enjoys the constant mothering by the volunteer who found him. This not only includes bottle feeding in the morning, lunch, evening and night time but also involves nightly sleepovers in his “Pippy Shack”. Some of Rudolph’s favorite hobbies include lying by the volunteer bonfire, listening to 80’s music, drinking hot milk and following his “mother” around Harnas. |  |
Poems from Pippi – Rudolph’s mother. It seems she is not only a animal mother of note and spend her evening sleeping in a cement cell with her baby but can also write a very striking poem!! Take note that they are directly translated from Swiss German :)
The night is falling over Harnas and snuff out all the colours from the day. The stars appear out of a velvet night black carpet like glittering precious stones, so beautiful and available near. They twinkled on the southern night sky interweaved in the milky way. The southern cross high in the sky shows the way, the evening star glitters and sparkles on the horizon.
Slowly the night gives way to the dawn before the sun sets up.
Depending on the light and the time of day the ground takes completely different colours, in the morning the ground glows light red orange. At midday in the hot sun yellow brown almost auburn ochre and dusty. On a murky day or when the clouds cast shadows it is like not brown sometimes almost colourless, grey like ash, but then again it flames in the evening sun like cinnabar.
In the moonlight the golden grass becomes silver and the sand shimmers in a weak gleam of cast iron.
Pippy
Behind the silhouette of the trees the horizon is a blazing and soon the darkness falls over the earth like a fire dark cover. It’s the hour when the birds fall silent and the odd night concert of the savannah starts. The air is full of metallic singing from the crickets and the croaks of the frogs. You can hear the buzzing of the mosquitoes and somewhere you hear Gumbi giggling and then suddenly it is absolutely silent. Then you can only hear the whispering of the savannah wind. Then the eyes close…
Pippy
The baby baboons moved
The baby baboons are now in a Namibian paradise. After living in a small place for a majority of their time at Harnas the babies have now been moved into a large and entertaining enclosure built with the help of the San people and the volunteers.
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Over three days, farm work at Harnas was dedicated to building their new home. Old trees were dug into the ground, a waterhole was built, shelter was placed throughout and a number of toys such as tires and pipes were strategically placed in the enclosure. Everyone was very excited to see how the babies experience their new home for the first time so a number of volunteers woke at sunrise to witness this special moment. After inspecting the place timidly at first it was easy to see that the babies will enjoy their new home immensely, even if they did have to get used to the electric fence! |
Rain
| The Namibian rainy season has definitely come upon us, with the new group uniform being the yellow rain jackets provided by Harnas. The rain comes and goes as is the typically Namibian way, with the numerous funny sights that can be associated with the weather all starting to appear; including the volunteers rushing around in the rain trying to cover food and swap blankets, the amorous tortoises making the most of the wet weather and the rare bullfrogs that appear for only a few days a year. All of the animals seem to cope very well with the rain and everyone puts in a great effort to make it as comfortable as possible for them. |
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Alice is back to the herd
Alice the springbok is now out of the protective grass area and has joined the herd of wild springboks in the bush area. The latest news is that Alice is absolutely enjoying her new found freedom and is believed to be pregnant.
Lammie
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Lammie was a poor unfortunate lamb which was not accepted by her mother. But she found her way to the peaceful household and was brought up very comfortably. She was absolutely convinced she is a dog and besides scraching on the door, climbing through the dog hole, eating chicken and jumping for the ball she also learned to sleep on beds.
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Boertjie
The old baboon which suffers from epilepsy is going to get a bigger enclosure where he can run around and where he has a lot of space.
The vet changed his medication into a stronger one which we hope will make him feel better.
At the moment he enjoys a special caretaking by a volunteer. In the meantime it seems that we found out that maizemeal is a factor that triggers Boertjie’s attacks. We have eliminated this out of his diet and he seems to have improved quite a bit. We also had a guest visit, Noelle Oosthuizen, who has a lot of experience with baboons and brought special medication for him that helps to overcome or avoid regular attacks. Noelle is also writing a book about funny baboon stories, so for all you that have had something interesting happening regarding baboons, please feel free to send her your story. She spent a week here talking to Marieta trying to put to paper all the years of disasterous baboon encounters. Good luck Noelle!
Noelle Oosthuizen – junglemyst@hotmail.com
Bat-eared foxes
Born Dec 2007 Banana, Pepper, Flick, Bandit, Peanut, Floyd came to the farm as very small babies, they are from the Herero land where a farmer found them. It was hard to feed them because they were not used to people and they didn’t want to be touched. After a lot of caretaking and a couple of weeks, the babies are accepting the love and attention of the volunteers. They are happy, bouncy, and full of life. The weakest of the babies Flick has become the wildest of the little group and keeps the volunteers busy! |
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Klippie
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After a lot of hard work, especially by a handful of dedicated volunteers, Klippie got used to be fed with milk bottles and is now drinking on average 12 liters of milk a day. She is also enjoying a variety of different trees and bushes in her current diet.
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Veterinary update
Our local vet spend another day on Harnas examinating all the animals in the "waiting room".
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They are under the care of the volunteers and we hope they will recover soon. |
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We have also received a wild hyena from a farm close to Okahandja. The hyena was held in a small enclosure until the vet confirmed yesterday that she is in good condition and will now be released.
Besides from some deworming, deticking and other less important things it was a successful visit.
Thanks to the volunteers for a new cow
Marie – the caretaker of Klippie came into the office one morning very demotivated and wanted to know if she can have prices for cows as she has not the energy of trying to squeeze out any more milk out of daisy. It seems that with a baby giraffe of 2 months that now already drink 12 litres of milk a day, baby Rudolph, baby springboks and lammie poor Daisy was running out of steam and can only produce so much. We would like to thank the volunteer group of January 2008 – especially Marie - with their initiative to buy a cow. Together the volunteers raised over N$7000.00 to buy a new cow for Harnas. THANKS to this group of volunteers JANeight will be our new cow!!!!
We also had a very interesting party for the volunteers – Karaoke!! It seemed that after a night of frogs croaking and loads of laughter the German division won the competition.
New Office
The office that is home to Juan, Jo, Schalk, Frikkie and all other frustrated helpers is currently undergoing a major refurbishment with the completion date hopefully being soon. Currently everyone is working out of the reception area and things are getting a bit cramped so all involved are eagerly awaiting the grand opening of the new office.
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Church
A place to listen to your heart and to talk to God - in any language or religion.
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Projects:
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Animal Nursery
A new initiative for 2008 is the proposal to build an animal nursery. The idea behind this project is to be able to care for all the different baby animals in the same area as most of the needs are the same for all animals. |
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Our most urgent project!!! Animal GPS Collars
To help with the pioneering initiative of the Harnas Lifeline area it has been decided that we will be fundraising to acquire at least 20 state of the art GPS tracking collars. These collars will be able to help us keep a track of the health and whereabouts of the animals released into the Lifeline area by viewing all the relevant data on a continually updating satellite run computer. The collars cost approximately $3,500 US so fundraising is planned to start immediately. Due to the incredible financial expense this will bring we would like to challenge all groups of volunteers, companies, individuals or anyone interested to buy a collar or donate towards releasing an animal back to nature!!! |
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Regards, Zion & Trust and the Harnas Team
