Brenda's Jewellery Studio

Monday, 23 April 2007

TREEMAIL 2

Hello again!

All is well and I am busy establishing my own territory here which includes setting up firm boundaries with regards to certain cultural and discriminatory differences. Some unfortunate individuals thought this cat would just hold her tongue but have realized what a razor-sharp weapon of defense it can be…

I am hanging on to my loft apartment tooth and nail and the other four guys have moved into the ‘quaint wooden chalets with sweeping panoramic views of abundant wildlife’. We all helped tidy the place up and make it comfortable and I painted the entire main area (vanilla ice-cream and creamy mint.) If nothing else I can add painting to my CV although I have now exhausted my lifetime’s fair share of it.

Simunye’s cuisine hit an all time low – so the troops revolted and we are getting results!

I am delighted to report that the training rifle broke. It is in Nelspruit being repaired and my shoulder is celebrating its absence…

We went camping at Le Bombo which is a concession in the Kruger that Singita has the rights to for the next 20 years. It is extremely beautiful there as no one had explored the area before – all the roads had to be put in by Singita and it is completely private. The lodge is built on raised platforms as not to impact on the earth. We camped on the high bank of a river after putting up the tents that you obviously needed a Phd for and someone had lost the instructions… We braaied and watched a fire-red sunset while the nocturnal creatures woke from their daylong slumber. However, the next day there was a cyclone warning from Mocambique, so amid large winds, drizzle and dust we packed up and fled back to the lodge’s staff accommodation. Shelley and I arranged to use the spa’s exquisite shower facilities. I have never been filthier in my life. I fear I might have used up the Kruger’s entire water quota during that spectacular shower, so I was thrilled to hear that it poured with rains for days after we left. We saw a herd of 16 Sable antelope which was a big treat as they have become very rare. (I had to do a presentation on why they are so rare on our return and the research shows that it is habitat loss due to the tsetse fly being exterminated, cattle farming, hunting, the false water points that were put up in the Kruger that attracted other plains game into their previously undesirable areas and so on…)

Once back in the Sabi Sands we went frogging. It was riveting. Truly.

We dressed up like freaks in our waterproof stuff with little torches on our heads and headed out into the dark rainy night. The piercing cacophony was almost deafening as we squelched around their favourite quagmires (two big words hey Mom!). After that we studied frogs as our theory component and had our first proper test - I came top of the class (104% - there were a lot of bonus questions!!!) which was a huge relief as I had been feeling like the class dunce up until then.

Shortly after this we went on a mini birding day. We were divided up into teams and had to record as many birds as we could within and afternoon and morning drive. It was fearsome competitive stuff. These twitchers are very highly strung… I had absolutely no idea what they were on about or looking at most of the time. I nominated myself as the team’s secretary bird and recorded all we saw – 120 in 2 consecutive drives! We are busy studying birds now and I will be expected to know 100 birds by sight (which normally means a little blur flying beyond some distant tree) and 50 birds by call. This should prove trickier than the frogs…

Every single drive is unique but today I went on the most fascinating and emotionally overwhelming drive ever, and it’s the main reason I’m writing this Treemail.

I joined one of our guides and his four guests for the morning drive at 5.00am. We drove along the river road and soon saw a hippo come running out of the bushes nearby and making a dash for the water. (Just this week someone on a neighbouring farm got stuck between a hippo and its water refuge and was attacked, so it is always a little scary seeing these animals crashing their way back to the water because they look so fat and placid when they are there.)

Then we found a female leopard who had caught a large impala ram in the night. She was in a tree, then climbed down and went to feed – first plucking off the impala’s fur. Her nearly full-grown cub was with her and he is a real character. He lay in the grass while she fed and then she got up and called him. He hid, lay low and didn’t respond. So she walked toward the direction she had left him in only to be ambushed as he leapt out of the bushes trying to give his mom a fright. She reacted by gently pinning him to the ground and giving him a severe face-washing…

Then he decided to check me out. I was sitting on my own in the back of the Land Rover. He walked directly up to the back of the vehicle while looking at me, started gumming the rear-view light and then lapped up some of the icy water that was dripping from the cooler box below my seat. Then he decided that he would lie there under the vehicle for a while. I slowly clasped my ponytail to my head as I am sure he was eyeing it out for a game of pounce, and I don’t think a leopard hanging on to my head would have been very constructive.

After that we went off to have a look at some lions that had killed/drowned a buffalo the other day and have been feeding off it for a while. The vultures were in attendance as well as three spotted hyenas, but the lions were still hanging on to it.

Now for the emotional bit – we decided to go and look at a large breeding herd of buffalo at a nearby pan. One other guide was there and he told us that an emaciated, bone-thin lone sub-adult male lion had had his last drink of water at the pan and then basically committed suicide by walking into the herd of buffalo. When we got there they were busy tossing this lion cub in the air with their horns, then goring it and then trampling it. It went on and on and on. After about 45 minutes it was just a bag of broken bones and stabbed flesh. With each new lot of buffalo that arrived they would come into the centre of this large herd, see the lion, snort, sniff, charge, gore and fling it. It was such rare and interesting animal behaviour. We had just been at a buffalo killed by lions yet I felt such empathy for this lion killed by the buffalo. This cub was one of members of a pride that has been split up and displaced by a new coalition in the area – and of course one less lion to worry about is the motivation for the buffalo killing their arch enemy.

Here’s a description for the pics:

Eleopmarula: I think this is probably the best series of leopard pictures I have taken. This is a ‘granny’ that was chased up into a Marula tree after a dispute over territory with her daughter!

Ebath: This is the leopard cub being bathed post pounce.

Ecatnap: speaks for itself

Eaaaah: A hippo showing his weapons

Erhinomudbath: These two guys are such good value. They are young bachelors and are continually bashing, pushing, shoving and wrestling each other. Here they are bathing.

Eliontossed: This is the poor cub being tossed in the air.

Epounceplan: Plotting his pounce…

Eliondead: The end.

I will be in Cape Town from 1 April to 22^nd – look forward to seeing you then if you are there.

Lots of love

Jenny Hishin

TREEMAIL 1

Hello hello!

Yes – I’m still alive after 3 weeks of tracking leopards, taming land rovers, shooting rounds at the rifle range and eating the sometimes wild cuisine at Simunye.

Simunye is our staff canteen where we have 3 hearty meals a day – each of which contain at least one vast vat of chicken and another of pap.

For now I am housed in a great loft apartment and I’m keeping a very low profile about this as I think it is imminent that I will be moving to a ‘quaint wooden chalet with sweeping panoramic views of abundant wildlife’ (estate agent speak for a flimsy tool shed in the middle of big 5 bush with a hyena that visits most nights)…

My day generally goes like this: up and driving at 5am (which is at least 3 hours earlier than anything I would ever consider in Claremont) to learn about the birds, bees, beasts and bushes; then breakfast, then formal lectures till 1pm, then lunch, then either an assignment, more lectures or shooting practice in the pm and another drive at about 4pm. After that its dinner and a crash into bed while the wildlife serenades.

The rifle training was rather amusing as I had absolutely no idea what our lecturer was on about until I actually got hold of a rifle and figured it all out and practiced. So far so good, and we are all confident at this stage that should a man-eating genet leap out at us from 10 metres and I have the .22 that he is an ex-genet. The .375 wasn’t too bad either and I will try out the .458 the next time and hope that my shoulder remains attached to my body where I prefer it to be.

I have 9 other trainees on the course with me – some training to be trackers and some guides. All of them have spent many years in the industry and have done several of the required guiding and tracking exams – so they are extremely knowledgeable which is great but also quite intimidating and overwhelming at times (there are about 90 million LBJs and they seem to know the names, age and sex of all of them…). Thankfully there is another woman on the course with me – a New Zealander named Shelley – and we make sure we give the others (Shangaans, a Zimbabwean and two Tanzanians) a run for their money.

In the space of writing this tree mail I was told that I would be taking a staff drive in an hours time – this meant getting a land rover, checking oil and water etc etc, booking out a rifle and 10 rounds, picking everyone up and taking them on a 2.5 hour drive around the reserve. Navigating is an absolute nightmare as everything is green and bushy, there are no red post boxes, big oak trees or houses with pink roofs to navigate by and certainly no road signs. (My trainer nearly fell out the land rover laughing the first time I drove as I instinctively reached to put the indicator on. I however gave him my steeliest look and raised eyebrow and he quickly regained his composure.) Anyway, tonight’s drive went very well and I have just walked to dinner and back and there is a leopard lurking between my loft apartment and Simunye - so that is really awesome and doesn’t make for dawdling. Apparently she is very cool with people – the other morning our GM opened his curtains only to see her and her cub standing on his deck and drinking from the pool!

The wildlife is spectacular – excellent leopard sightings, lion, there is even one male cheetah that has his territory here, elephant, rhino, buffalo right down to the most exquisite chameleons and dung beetles etc. Two days ago I was shadowing one of the rangers on his guest drives. While we were waiting for the guests I looked over the lodge balcony and there on the river bank below was a Cape Clawless Otter! Some of the rangers say they have worked in the KNP area for 5 years and never seen one, so it was a highlight for all of us. Six male lions have formed a coalition and moved into the area. They have annihilated all the existing prides structures etc, killed some of the other males and so on. It is of course very sad. I saw a lioness that had either been killed by one of them and dragged into a dam by crocs, or killed by crocs. She was all dismembered, bloated and furless and her little cub lay slowly starving to death on the bank. But that’s the web of life I guess and before we know it there will be new cubs and prides that are defended for many years by this formidable coalition.

Here’s a description for the pics:

Echeetahsil: is a silhouette of the cheetah who was out looking for a meal and climbed up this tree to check out the scene at sunset.

Ehoneymoon: is a pair of dungbeetles on their honeymoon with their nuptial ball. They will find a suitable place to bury it, she will lay an egg in it and the little larvae that hatches will feed off the nutritious dung until he is ready to go out and get his own sh!t together.

Ecalf: is a cheeky little nitwit who is all keen to trumpet at you as you drive past as long as his mom is standing by next to him.

EShangwa: is a female in our Shangwa section. She has two cubs. We’d been watching her for quite a while when we heard a growl from the dense bushes below. One of the cubs was hidden there completely out of view.

E4drink1pose: Is four of the coalition drinking while the other one walked past us. The sixth one had not joined up with them yet that evening. They were on the road right outside the lodge and proved a spectacular sighting for the guests returning from a 3 hour game drive.

eMartial: Is a Martial Eagle – they are huge, weighing up to 6kgs .

Lizzardbuzzardchick: Is a youngster we saw when Andrew and I visited here in Jan.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Have a superb Valentine’s Day and please send me all your news of the concrete jungle – it’s lonely out here!

Lots of love

Jenny Hishin

Sunday, 22 April 2007

News from Jenny Hishin....

Until end 2006, Jenny Hishin was a Thursday student at Brenda's Jewellery Studio.
She has taken a temporary break to do a 6 month Game Ranging Course at Singita Private Game Lodge, next door to Kruger Park. Here is her fascinating news...