We started off the day with a lecture about the various animals we may/will see while we're here.  A lot that we aren't going to work with directly will show up in Kruger while we're there, so it's handy to know ahead of time what to call them and what their habits may be.  Our lecture was emphasized by Gladys, the friendly ostrich (she's blind in one eye and has adopted a worker here as her boyfriend... follows him around, sleeps outside his house, etc.).  She wandered past the open-air lecture room while eating and poked her head in.  Afterwards, she came around by the eating area and posed for pictures.  She's very approachable and seems to like contact.  As it turns out, an ostrich neck feels like rubbing a warm fleece.

After our chat with Gladys we wandered over to the closest field and learned all about loading darts and the various types of guns they have here.  We practiced loading/charging the darts with water and firing at a 20 meter target, and then a 40 meter.  It was challenging, not least because Nimush (the husky pup, for those of you just joining in. It's NEE-moosh.) kept chasing Patricia (the angry ostrich) who would run for a second and then realize "I'm a giant-ass angry bird" and turn around to chase the dog instead.  Entertaining, but bad for the aim.

When we were done shooting, it was lunch time and then off to the crocodile farm who'd brought us the babies the previous day.   Sadly, our resurrected baby kicked off over night, so we only had three to take on the hour drive back with us.  We got a great tour of the farm, everything from the new babies up to the 40 year old giant breeders.  Nile crocodiles are apparently the second best in the industry.   Aussie saltwater crocs have smaller scales, so they can be grown to a larger size before culling and thereby produce more leather per animal (if scales are too big, they're not easily useable and no one wants that.)   So the croc farms have also pretty much put poachers out of business, meaning that wild populations have (ironically) rebounded because thousands of their relatives are being raised to be slaughtered in their place.

And that is pretty much the day.  We have some videos to watch after dinner tonight and a bit more lecturing about what we'll be doing in the park the next two days.  Tomorrow, we head out on a 3 hour drive to a game park where we'll be camping two nights.  So, you won't hear anymore from me until at least Friday night.  Tomorrow will be spent basically in hard labour, building the capture boma for the cape buffalo we're going after on Thursday.   I'm not sure if there's anything besides the buffalo on the schedule Thursday, but I think Gumbo the wounded elephant is our main target on Friday before we get back here.  It should be an excellent outing in general.  Not REAL camping, since they'll have electricity and mattresses for under the sleeping bags, but that's probably just as well since we'll be busting our butts all day.  I'll try to catch up with y'all when I get back Friday!  Till then,

-p