I didn’t write a blog for yesterday because nothing out of the ordinary happened. We waited for the elephants for four hours in the afternoon and only managed to spot them for an hour. For the last few days the main herd has been staying deep within the thickets in an area on the floodplain. This had made it difficult to view them for an extended period of time, if at all. According to Heike this behaviour has happened in the past and is an indication of one thing... that the elephants are calving. All we have been able to do is watch and wait.
Last night we hung out with the bush craft guys next door for the last time; today they headed for Joburg for a few days before the next leg of their training. This meant that we would finally be able to move into the Loose Mongoose Research Center, which we were all very excited to do. This morning we were up at 7:00am to finish packing our things... or in my case basically stuffing all my clothes into my bag and anything that didn’t fit into a large black garbage bag. We cleared out the cottage fridge and hauled our things next door around 8:30am. We couldn’t officially move in until later in the afternoon because the rooms were being cleaned out so we dropped our things off at the museum. Today was also grocery day! We were pumped about finally having fresh vegetables and fruit again. This is excellent for me as peanut butter and bread have each become a staple in my diet... And it gets better!! It was also Heike’s day to go into town so we compiled a list of snacks and other things that wouldn’t be included in our grocery budget from OpWall. This was fantastic since I was in dire need of something made out of chocolate. Before Heike made her trip into town we had a few hours to spare so we hopped onto the Ele-Truck and headed south to see if we could find the main herd.
Around 10:00am we tracked our radio signal to the same thickets that we have been watching for the past few days. Just on the edge was Ntini; he was foraging on the acacia trees so we decided to conduct a focal sample. Within the hour OJVM #2 had appeared, then a youngster, and then another. The herd was finally emerging from the thicket! We managed to do focal samples on five individuals before a large group of cows made their way onto the floodplain. As usual the four of us automatically started looking for the 5 week old calf. We spotted the calf following closely behind her mother as they made their way across the road in front of us. Following them was a large group of cows. I watched these cows closely as they meandered onto the road and managed to spot a tiny trunk from within the cluster of large legs. Heike had been right; the cows had been waiting in the thickets for the birth of the newest member of the herd. Moments later Ngani and Kohlewe broke out of the thickets as well. It seemed that all the bulls (aside from Lucky and Asiphephe) had sensed the birth of this new individual and made their way into the same area. It seemed like every member of the herd wanted to greet the new calf as they swarmed like bees around it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay as Heike wanted to make it into town around 2:30pm to do her shopping... not even a newborn calf made us object to the idea of leaving due to the promise of junk food she would be returning with. We were all extremely happy about how our day had turned out. Not only were we finally in our permanent living quarters and getting groceries, we had managed to take seven focal samples and a scan sample this afternoon. The brand new elephant calf is a very remarkable addition to the herd because of the population control methods in effect and it will be interesting to see what is going to happen if calves continue to be born.
The Loose Mongoose Research Center is fairly basic with a motel kind of style. The main building contains the kitchen at the north end with four rooms running along the north wall. Each room is the size of an average door room with two single beds, two night stands, and one small wardrobe. The bathroom at the south end contains two toilets and two showers. Along the length of the building is a sitting area and camp fire with two large umbrella thorn trees growing overhead. About 25 meters north of the main building is another small motel like structure that has four more rooms, a bathroom, and a small cement pad. All-in-all it is quite simple but very liveable by my new standards.
For dinner we made a butternut squash soup and discovered that the stove in the kitchen doesn’t work. The elements won’t even heat up enough to bring water to a boil... luckily, Heike lives thirty seconds away so we carried our pot over to her place to use her stove.
We were all pretty exhausted from all the excitement so after dinner we were all tucked inside our rooms and asleep by 9:30pm.
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