28.11.2018

28.11.2018 8 days at Buffelsdrift
Springbok

In the morning it was pretty cold again, first we drove to the lions and trapped them again so we could go around and cut all the plant that were growing too close to the electric fence.

Lea accidentally shocked herself by touching the fence with the shovel and Mariné shocked herself as well. Though she always shocks herself as soon as she is somewhat close to a fence. She tells us to watch out and then gets shocked herself a minute later.

While we were doing that it started to rain again so we hurried up and went into the car. Back at the camp we cleaned the elephant enclosure which was nice to get some warmth. We also saw a dove that was hiding inside the enclosure and a baby scorpion which looked kind of cute.

Next, Lea and I helped with cutting the meat and Larissa did the elephant food. It took quite a while to cut all the skin from the meat and saw it into smaller pieces. We filled a bunch of bags with it to later feed the lions.

We got driven back for lunch, Whitney had made some very tasty sandwiches with some special bread that tasted great.

Back at camp, we did a game count. We drove around the big enclosure and counted all the animals that we saw. And we saw a bunch of them. Especially the springboks that just seem to be everywhere around here. Small antelopes that are traveling in big groups.

Back again, we waited for Chris to show up so we could go check on the trap. There were too many springbok on one side of the enclosure, so they wanted to catch some and release them again on the other side.

For that, they set up a net trap with grass on the ground and nets that drop down from above. We sneaked towards the contraption and looked. And there were actually 2 springboks in it, so Chris activated it and the nets dropped down. Sadly, they managed to escape.

We set the trap back up and waited for a while before we went to check again. However, there were none this time.

We got driven back to our tents. After a cold quick shower, we ate dinner and kept watch around the trap. Because we should signal Chris when one of the springboks goes in since we could see it better from our side.

They got close but never went fully in, so we enjoyed the rest of our dinner and after a short talk went to our tents. It's too cold to sit outside for a longer time.