Today was planned around Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre and then a visit to a cheetah breeding facility.  First, though, we had to feed our new addition the baby giraffe.  Since I'd had an attempt to feed her last night, I just stood by while others took their turns.  She is, however, extremely friendly and wanting contact so we all got to cuddle a bit and play with her.  It's so cool to see a newborn that's bigger than I am...

We got to the rehabber fairly early, and received a talk from one of the workers there about how close to a crash the ecosystem is and some of the things that can be done to help.  They have a lot of education animals here, but mostly if they can't re-release something it'll probably end up getting put down.  Unless it's rare/endangered, this makes sense since it's really no kind of life for the animal... the education ones do serve an important ambassador role, so I can see keeping them on.

We met quite a few cool critters, including a yellow-billed kite (medium sized hawk) who thinks she's human and likes to sit on hats and hands.  There were also a ton of rock hyrax (think slightly smaller but fat groundhogs) and a baby warthog who's basically tame and cuddly.  We got to feed some of the vultures there too, which was a pretty neat experience.  Visiting around the place included the Martial Eagle, the largest African species that'll sometimes take lambs away, some lions, a hyena, wild dogs, a leopard and some cheetahs.  We also saw a pair of honey badgers.  They're little things, about skunk-badger size, but our tour guide said he'd seen them go after lions and elephants in the wild. They're entirely fearless and vicious when they feel like it.   We also met a cheetah who was partly raised as a pet and fed a poor diet, so her growth was a bit stunted.  However, she was extremely social. We went in the pen with her and she was all purrs and hand-licking, a gorgeous animal.

After the rehabber, we went to a cheetah breeding facility.  They have other animals too, but the cheetahs were the main reason they started up and comprise the bulk of their population.  Nothing seen from a car could really compare to the up close and personal meeting at the rehabber, so this sorta lost some of its thrill.  We did get closer to some wild dogs, though, and saw a beautiful little sable calf with its parents.  The King cheetahs were pretty neat too, though it turns out that they aren't an endangered subspecies but a simple recessive colour mutation of the standard critter.

After the rehabber, we came back home.  Tonight will be spent organizing who gets driven where and when in the morning, offloading our cameras onto Geran's computer so he can make us DVD's with everyones photos, and then most of the group will probably be getting drunk.  I'll be going for sleep, since I know I won't be getting much on the plane... I'll land in the states around 10:30 AM Sunday morning in Chicago. Once I locate an outlet to plug in my phone, I'll call around and let y'all know I'm home ok.  I'm kinda looking forward to getting a lot more sleep once there, and the zoo work should be cool.... but there's also part of me that'd love to stay here all summer, no matter how early the days and how hard the work.  Maybe sometime in the future, though... Later,

-P