Day 5: Sable, Nyala and Happy Birthday Lindsey!

 Once again, our hyena patient failed to keep her appointment. Sad because we cannot help her until she shows up, but on the other hand, a night of uninterrupted sleep was not that terrible! Being busy outdoors all day does leave us all pretty tired!

We had a 90-minute drive over the mountains this morning to reach our work site. The mountains are gorgeous, even in the cool cloudy weather this morning. The road winds around and backand forth up one side, crosses through a tunnel through the pass, and winds and switches down the other side. From mostly bush, wildlife and occasional goats on our side, we crossed into mainly agricultural land, with irrigated pastures, crops and citrus. We saw cabbages, squash, oranges, mangoes, orchard grass, clover and alfalfa (known here as lusern), and herds of fat cattle grazing bright green fields. 

We were to dart some young sable bulls that had been sold to an neighboring reserve. They buyers were there as well, so we had quite a big group. The sable seemed quite used to being fed routinely, and stayed nearby in a smaller enclosure, making it much easier to find and dart them. Our first once was a 2-month old calf that was still nursing his mother. We captured him because he was in somewhat poor condition, and we wanted to examine him and treat any problems right away. He was quite thin, had quite a few ticks, and the reserve had a history of problems with roundworms in their hoofstock. So he was given a vitamin injection, deworming injection, tick treatment, and an antibiotic injection (just in case, since we are not able to monitor him for improvement or easily treat him again.). He was pretty much a perfect study: He went down quickly and quietly when darted, stayed sedated enough for us to work on, and was stable in terms of heart rate and breathing, and when we reversed the drugs, he calmly stood up and walked away. 

We captured 2 young bulls next and loaded them into the buyers' trailer, then accompanied them to their home about 45 minutes away. I was invited to ride with the buyers, so had a chance to meet and speak with more nice people! On arrival, the 2 young bulls were released into one camp, and the trailer parked alongside the road. 

After a bit more organization, we began darting young nyala bulls in the camp across the road. Once again, they were curious and stayed near the gate most of the time, so little time was wasted searching for them. In all, we darted 5 of them and got them all settled into the trailer so they could be hauled in turn to their buyers. A couple of them did not cooperate completely, but were sedate enough to walk to the trailer and load.

We had a free hour when we returned, which many used to shower away the enormous amounts of ted dust clinging to all of us. Supper was beef kabobs, squash, yams, potatoes, garlic bread, tossed salad and bean salad. We wrapped up by celebrating Lindsey's 18th birthday with a cake, candles and a special hat and glasses for the birthday girl. Happy Birthday, Lindsey! Welcome to being  a badass adult! You are doing amazing things here! No challenge unmet so far!