Friday, July 6, 2007

catching rhino


Some one read my blog!! Cheated really, but who cares - thanks Ada!
Had an exciting weekend 2 weeks ago, my mate -Larry "the vet" Patterson- caught and moved two young female rhino from Edo's camp to Kanana. Larry at 61 stalked the beasts armed with no more than a dart gun and from 10 metres darted them, then waited very quietly until the two ton rhino succembed to the drugs around 8 minutes. The larger managed to stand on my toe as we were shoving it into the crate, and it's true they weigh 4 x 500 kgs = 2 tons. The "girls" are sisters aged 6 and 4 and we now have 7, 5 females 1 lucky bull and a baby. The sisters are now in a boma next to our house, we want to habituate them hoping they will think of this as home and drink in our waterhole. We'll wait and see.
Been very cold recently, unfortunatley our thermometer broken so temp measured by thickness of ice on birdbath. Seems to me that weather more normal than recent years so hoping for good rain when time comes round.

1 comment:

Ada Goulding said...

A very interesting read. Larry is a very brave man!
I know what to buy you for your birthday - a thermometer!
A