working away

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the infrequent posts nowadays. I feel like I haven't had much to post. Just working away. I had a pretty good morning yesterday though.  Despite a mix-up or lack of communication where my guard did not show up on time and I had to go pick him up out of my way, we got done with everything by lunchtime and saw some cool stuff.

The most exciting of which was, I came within 30m of a cheetah on foot! We were walking out into the middle of a plain of fairly tall grass to measure the vegetation. I was already looking down at the ground when a cheetah who had been napping in the grass hopped up. My guard casually goes, "Oh, there is a cheetah sleeping here." For a second I didn't know if we were supposed to carefully back away to the car, but my guard didn't seem worried, so I just carried on measuring grass. The cheetah sat near us for a little but, then eventually walked away. No big threat really. A single cheetah will not take on a human (a lion might though).
We also saw 2 lions which I wasd excited about because I hadn't seen any in a long time and had been searching for days with no luck. I had apparently missed some my mere minutes several days in a row! I also saw 3 black rhino and 3 white rhino. The 2 groups came face to face and greeted each other (with a little apprehension) by touching noses. It is also funny to see rhinos run. Anything that big trying to move fast is a little funny. So that is about it for now.
Tomorrow is August! Which means I only have about 3 weeks left.

Here is a random picture of an elephant in the marsh the other day to keep this post from being all text

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more babies

I have decided that baby warthog piglets are the cutest thing ever.

Giraffe babies nursing aren't too bad either.

In other news, it is still raining here. 3 of the past 4 days at least. It is supposed to be the dry season...

Just working...

Sorry I haven't posted anything in awhile. Now that I am in the swing of the new plan, I have mostly just been working. Getting data...
Dan came to visit one last time on Tuesday to make sure things are going ok. He left yesterday to fly back to the states. I have now finished the first 2 weeks of the new plan. We have broken it up into 3 2-week blocks, so I am 1/3 of the way done. Only a month left to go!  While this place is beautiful, I am a little anxious to come home. Missing people, my own house, and my cat Magic!

I don't have too many new photos to share. Here are a couple of a black rhino and her little calf.

Moon rising over Mount Kenya

We went for a sundowner with some of the Earthwatch people the other night. The sunset was kind of a let-down.... but it was definitely made up for by the view of the moon rising over Mount Kenya. It had been so hazy here the past few weeks we hadn't seen Mount Kenya at all. Then when it came back, this was a really cool sight.

Tonight is Earthwatch's last night. They leave tomorrow morning after their 2-week stint here. So there is a BBQ tonight to say farewell. I am told there will be cake and possibly even ice cream too!

New Car!

The new car finally arrived! And it is awesome. So quiet, leather seats, pop top (so the people in the back seat can stand up and stick their head out). Josephat drove it up from Nairobi today. He brought it to me at Ol Pejeta and took the red one back to Mpala. Dan also visited today and brought Lena, Bianca, and Amy (from Michigan) so they got to see the new car transfer right before they left.

I call it my "new car", but apparently it is actually pretty old. However, it hasn't been driven in something like 12 years. It was just sitting at a car rental place in Nairobi that Dan works with and he wanted to sell it, so Dan bought it for a good price. I'm excited. I have to get used to it a little bit-- the clutch is a bit more sensitive than the red car. Now I need to name it. Any thoughts? It is kind of mint green, so I don't know if that should be incorporated. There is already a car named Kermit at Mpala, so that is out, btw.

On a more gruesome note-- we found a zebra kill some lions had already eaten at and jackals were on now. Then we found another zebra who had apparently escaped the attack-- but his whole right haunch was ripped off! The skin was just hanging by his tail and you could see all the muscle. He was still alive and walking and eating, but I don't know how that will heal. It might get infected and he will not make it...

Lions and Cheetahs

It's been a pretty good 2 days for big cat sightings...
Yesterday I saw three lionesses lounging under a tree. Then today I first saw a male and female lion together. They were napping... then he tried to hump her a couple times. She seemed to respond by saying, not now, just get off of me. Then later today I went for a drive with Kim and we ran into this really cute cheetah.

Baby animals!

It's that time again-- the annual baby animals edition of the blog!

Cheetah cub with its mom-- this is an older cub, so not quite as cute as a tiny one, but still awfully adorable

The tiniest baby zebra. It must have been born just earlier that day-- you can see the mom still has blood on her back legs



And of course a baby giraffe, because even though they are already larger than a human, they look small next to their moms

In work news: I tested out part of the new plan on Wednesday-- my census method works pretty well just speaking it all into a voice recorder. Then I can put it in a spreadsheet later. Today (Thursday) I went out with a guy and moved all of my cages to the Eastern side and did vegetation measurements at them. My former guard James is busy chaperoning the Earthwatch group, so I had a new guy named Rashid. He does not get a gun, so if anything charges us, we just have to run back to the car.

New Plan!

So Dan visited today and I think we have come up with a totally new plan for my project. The way I was trying to do it was just not working. Trying to have 5 set sites, it was too hard to get enough data on 7 or 8 species from each one. And of course there was the problem with cows being where I thought they weren't supposed to.

So now instead of having set sites, I think I am going to work on the whole Eastern side of the conservancy (but the eastern side only), so I can have collars on all cows on the eastern side. Then it won't matter where they go, as long as I know it from the collars. I will do censuses of where all the animals I can see on the eastern side are every 4 days or so. On the other days I will take behavior measurements on grazing animals of 6 focal species of different body sizes, 3 ruminants and 3 non-ruminants: Grants gazelle, Hartebeest, and Eland... and warthog, zebra, and white rhino.

I am going to test out the census method tomorrow, and then if it seems feasible, I will need to move most of my cages to spread them out across the eastern side to measure vegetation growth.

I feel much better now having a new plan. I sort of felt like I was wasting my time for the last week. Hopefully this works and goes much better. In addition, Dan said he is buying me a car and it could be here as early as next week! Then Blair's car can go back to Mpala until she arrives at the beginning of August to use it. I can't wait to see what it is!!!

Earthwatch

The first Earthwatch group arrived today. We figured out yesterday that there were definitely not enough rooms for everyone, so the staff was kind of scrambling to get things ready today. The CEO even had to get involved. They sent 2 big canvas tents down and put 2 beds in each to make enough room. I thought I was going to have to move into one of those, but apparently some of the Earthwatch people thought they were cool and wanted to stay in them, so I got to keep my room!

And now for some photos:

Mother Southern white rhino and her calf grazing

And napping 

There were 24 elephants on zebra plain last night 

Including 2 males fighting

Goat Roast: A story in pictures

Caution: graphic content-- images of slaughtering a goat

Nicole and I riding in the back of the truck on the way to buy a goat. 

 These two boys live in the community just outside Ol Pejeta where we bought the goat. They were very friendly... and loved my digital camera. They did not want to let it go when we had to leave.

 Wrangling the goat.

Tieing rope around its legs to take it home in the truck (still alive here!)

 Transport

As we were driving back with the goat, a cold wind picked up and large storm clouds rolled in... uh oh.



 We got back just as the rain was starting to fall and waited it out an hour or so until the rain subsided. Then it was time to slaughter the goat.

 Nicole and I held the legs while Kim cut its throat. I felt so bad...

The aftermath.

We cut off all of the meat and made nyama choma (roast meat) over an open wood fire in the fire pit. No pictures of that because it got dark. But I think George does have a picture somewhere of me gnawing on an entire leg.



Crazy weather

This weather is nuts. It rained last night, so the roads were a bit wet this morning, but I made it through and everything had dried out by noon. Then I went out in the afternoon and thunder and lightning started rolling in again. Next thing I know, it is HAILING on Oryx plain. Marble-sized hail pelting my car. I didn't even know it could hail in Kenya. So I decided to high-tail it back to the research center because I did not want to get stuck out in the field. I took the long way home to use the better, gravel roads and I think I drove around most of the storm. But I did not get to finish the observations I needed to do sadly.

It continued to rain for another couple hours too, so I did not make it to the bomas again tonight. I don't know what I am going to do about that. It is getting old. Plus, I had just seen some of the herders out on the plain before the rain and told them I would be there at 6. Then I didn't show up. But hopefully they understand why. I felt really bad for them during the hail. I wonder what they did?