Monday, August 13: Giraffe and hippos, oh, my!

Another amazing day in South Africa! We had the opportunity to get up close with a giraffe and a hippo! Mind you, giraffes are HUGE and hippos are the most dangerous animal on the African continent! They kill more people per year than any predator! With that background....here's our day.

We left a bit later to meet for veterinary work with Rita again. Today's mission: To capture and relocate two giraffes from one game farm to another breeding facility 90 minutes away. We joined another group of vet students and divided between 2 trucks: The lead truck carried the spotters, Rita, the transport specialist and the other students. We rode in the second truck with the giraffe wranglers and pulled the giraffe trailer.

Kait and Hannah next to the giraffe trailer. Although it has a ramp, it is insanely narrow; I would be skeptical about loading a trained horse into it, not to mention a sedated, blindfolded wild giraffe!

We headed off down the typical 2-tracks, bouncing around in the bed of the truck and looking for giraffes. We spotted 3 different groups; the spotter eventually selected a dark-coated breeding-age female.

One of the 3 groups of giraffes we saw

Rita, with her typical sharpshooting skills, hit her target with a tranquilizer dart. By the time we arrived, the giraffe was just going down. Rita told several stories about the hazards of tranquilizing giraffes (as you can well imagine!). The first one she ever darted fell wrong and broke a leg, and more recently, one fell onto a protruding stump that penetrated his chest, and he had to be shot. In addition, apparently giraffes tend not to breathe well under sedation. Rita guards against this by using combination drugs in her dart, then immediately reversing the one that suppresses breathing as soon as the giraffe is safely down and blindfolded. Giraffes are blindfolded and have earplugs put in place to prevent their panicking due to handling. Both are held in place with brightly colored tape to ensure that they are removed at the destination.

The giraffe is down. Unfortunately, she fell into some brush. The wranglers were quick to grab their machetes and chop her free. In the background, you can see one of them with a thick rope. This will be doubled and looped around her neck, one end threaded under each foreleg, and brought around to the outside of each hind leg. Placing the ropes is fairly hazardous duty, as she continued to kick while down, and her hooves are HUGE! Not to mention those huge strong legs!

Placing the ropes and the blindfold. The ropes allow them to steer her into the trailer once her sedation is partially reversed, and the blindfold helps prevent panic.

The giraffe is now blindfolded and her ears are plugged. You can see that the ropes have been run and surrounding brush cleared. 

Background: Wrangler, other student group. Kneeling, left to right: Brooklyn Summer, Hannah, James, Kait and the transporter. Standing: Me (shout out to Vicksburg FFA! Check out the shirt!), Chloe, and Jessica, our program coordinator and all around miracle worker

Same photo except Rita the vet (tan camp shirt and hat) has replaced Jessica. We are pretty impressed with Rita, and feel super lucky to be working with such a smart, fun and informative professional. The students have proclaimed her "a badass", in the nicest possible way.

Giraffe lips are super soft, and really long and flexible to allow them to grasp the leaves that they wrap their tongues around.

Supporting her neck as they partially reverse her sedation

Supporting the neck with my hip (it's heavy!) and sneaking a quick pet and feel of her mane.

Unbelievably, they had her loaded into the trailer in less time than it typically takes to load a horse! Using the ropes, the halter, and a prod, they directed a blind, deaf, partially sedated giraffe into that narrow little trailer!

She settled surprisingly fast, and quickly learned to keep her head down on the way out to avoid tree limbs. 

At this point, the plan was for us to attend the 11:30 am feeding of Jessica the hippo, then return to this farm to tranquilize and load a second giraffe. Unfortunately, the 3-hour round trip, plus unloading, put them too near to dark to attempt the second animal today. Not certain whether we will be able to be in on that one or not; we'll see how the schedule plays out.

Meanwhile, we went to visit Jessica the hippo. She is a now-18-year-old female that was orphaned in a river flood and handraised by a ranger and his wife. She is completely free to come and go as she pleases, and she spends some time with her human family, and some of her time with the herd of hippos that hang out downriver. Several documentaries have been made about her; if you are interested in hippos or her story, here are a couple of links:

Animal Planed Oddest Animal Couples--4 minutes

Cut of Aussie documentary--6 minutes

Here she is with our group:

Kait feeding Jessica cracked corn

Chloe feeding

Summer feeding

James feeding

Hannah feeding Jessica

This is Richie. He is 6 years old, and was likewise orphaned in a flood. They have handraised him, and he has his own pool next to their house. They are unable to let him out onto the river yet, as he is currently about half-sized, and the full-sized bull hippos would kill him. In the evenings, he has full run of the property, including the house, and has met and bonded with Jessica. They hope to be able to allow him river access in another few years.

Jessica drinking tea as I go in for a kiss!

Since the transporter ran out of time to go back for the second giraffe, the later afternoon gave us some free time at the lodge. With bright sun, and a dry 80+ degrees, it was a lovely day to hang out by the pool, nap, catch up on one's blog, or whatever else seemed good. Although it wasn't planned as downtime, everyone appreciated a moment to catch their breath! It was really the first unstructured time we have had since arriving in South Africa; we are so eager to do and see everything that we have been pretty constantly on the go!

The sun has faded quickly into the mountains. We had supper on the deck (short ribs, sweet potatoes cooked with apples, green beans cooked with potatoes and onions, and American-style potato salad. 

We will leave at 6:30 tomorrow morning for a full day of veterinary work, so this blogger is headed to bed! Hope you're enjoying our adventures, as we certainly are! I wish I had more time to describe everything better, but I am really committed to being present here and seeing and doing, rather than spending my time with technology. So, good-night for now. The crickets are out and the bullfrog has retired!