Thunder Storms

Our last Bushwise exam was yesterday before the FGASA final exam so yesterday was a day to relax. I spent the afternoon baking chocolate cake, while most of the group went to Mahlahlah to watch a rugby game. Everyone was in a great mood and we were all up at Declan and Marty’s house hanging out when the Thunder started to clap. About 11:30pm Suzie and I walked to the kitchen to get a drink and it started pouring rain. The Thunder and lightening was non-stop with loud booming crashes and lightening that lit up the entire camp and it looked like it was almost daylight. We sat in the dinning area listening to the rain druming on the tin roof and watching the lightening crash. A couple times the thunder cracked so loud that Suzie squealed. It was her first real thunderstorm. She is from southeast England and said she had never experienced a storm like this. I ran back to my room to make sure the windows and doors were all closed and was soaked within seconds the road and paths were also flooded and turning into a river. In some spots it was as deep as my calf. The power went out about 30 minutes into the storm but there was enough non-stop lightening that a flashlight was not even needed. Between the lightening, though, it was so dark that you could not see your hand in front of your face. The rain poured for about 2 hours and the thunder and lightening went well into the night. Suzie and I finally made it back to our rooms about 2 in the morning when the rains let up a bit.

We still have not heard about Lucy, hopefully she is doing OK.

Ahh! Snakes!

The weather has been unbelievably HOT lately with temperatures above 35˚C making it very difficult to get any studying done as all we want to do is lounge in the pool. Friday came around so quickly this week and everyone realized that we had not done any studying for this week’s exam, which will be on Saturday. I had Aislinn’s assessment drive to go on in the morning as a guest, so I decided I would do some hard-core studying after brunch. We had just finished the dishes when from the kitchen we hear Lucy, she's our cook, cry for help. Turns out there was a snake in the kitchen, a spitting cobra, this snake can be very deadly. We called the instructors and Daryl came out. After much moving around of the deep freeze he eventually got the snake out of the kitchen. It was our first sighting of a deadly snake on campus. As we finally settled down to get back to studying Lucy calls for help again. She is starting to feel dizzy and her foot is hurting. Lucy thinks the snake bit her. Aislinn and Kathryn grab the first aid kit and bandage up her leg while I sit and talk to her trying to keep her calm. Suzie calls the instructors on the radio and Ruth brings the vehicle around, as we have to get to the gate to get cell phone signal and call an ambulance. If bitten its venom affects the Nervous system and your breathing and if not monitored can lead to death. Most snakes however, will try to get away to a safe place rather then bite and if they do bite a lot of time it is a “dry bite” where they don’t inject venom. Lucy, we don’t think was bitten as the symptoms didn’t seem to be severe enough. Daryl thinks a lot of it was in her head from fear. She was taken to the hospital and all they did was give her a shot of anti-venom and send her home. So far we haven’t heard anything but we are sure she is OK. The scariest part is the doctor who treated her gave her anti-venom. This is never a good idea and most places will not give it to you as you have to know exactly what snake bit you and the problems that arise from the anti-venom can be as bad if not worse than the snake bite. Usually you just treat the symptoms and eventually your body will rid itself of the venom. We are all worried about her but think she will be fine. Later that night Daryl spotted a python up by his house. It was just a small one and no need to fear it but we are now even more cautious around here about snakes as they seem to be coming out.

That makes our snake sighting total at 6, Brown house snake, vine snake, tiger snake, sand snake, python and spitting Cobra. Photo is of the tiger snake. As for studying well not much got done but the test was not too bad and I think we all passed.

Assessment Drive

I passed my assessment drive on Wednesday! Now I am one step closer to becoming a full-fledged field guide. I thought it went quite well and Ruth, who was my tracker, agreed it was awesome. The assessment drive is not difficult in the fact that we have more than enough knowledge to pass. What makes it difficult is that we start the drive from camp and not from the reserve and we have to stop and talk about things we see on the side of the road leading to the reserve never quite making it into Makalali. Basically it means we won’t see any mammals but have to incorporate them into our assessment in some way. As you all know my driving skills are not the best so I choose to do a short little walk around our tree path here in the camp. This helped me pass my exam as I was able to point out tons of little things like insects and tracks and get my “guests” involved by showing them butterfly eggs, and let them smell the scent of the Tamboti tree. There was also a beehive on the path and my assessor, Mark, was impressed with my knowledge about the bees. Bees when coming back from collecting pollen will dance out their route to the other bees shaking their abdomen and emitting pheromones so the other bees know where to go. Some bees will raid other hives of their honey by pretending to fly the same way as the bees they are raiding in order to get past the guards protecting the honey.

As we went on the road a vehicle passed us pulling a horse trailer. Mark knew the guy driving and asked me to pull over. The guy was transporting a Sable (type of antelope) to a hunting lodge. We don’t have sable on our reserve so we all got to climb on top the trailer and look at it from over head. They are beautiful animals with long curved horns.

After that the drive was pretty much over and we headed back to the camp where Mark interviewed me on things I was not able to cover such as astronomy and gave me feed back about the drive. He said my knowledge was good and I knew my bird and bird calls very well but I needed more practice on my driving, knowing when to change gears and things like that but I already knew about it so was quite pleased.

Next step the FGASA Level 1 Exam on November 20.

Picture of a Grey Go-Away Bird.