The Awesome Animals

I have been privileged to work with a variety of animals while I have been at Tenikwa.

Will miss the excitement of getting new animals in, but I know they are in good hands

What I Had To Work With

Well through out my time here at Tenikwa I must say I have met some of the most interesting people that I know off. All of them are crazy, unhinged and I am sure that there was twitching too. But one thing that they were all is AWESOME FRIENDS.

Dumisani, aka Muntu.

Dumi showed me what I know about wildlife rehab. He was always up for mischief and never said no to heading to Toks (Local shabeen) for a drink that never ended that way. We always some how managed to come back drunk every time. He was always there and willing to teach and help anyone no matter what is happening.

Dominique

Dom was one of those happy go lucky people that not much could get him down. Seriously this man was EPIC, his car broke down about 300km away from work so he left it with some random man to fix and hitched hiked with truckers to get back to work.

We first met when he had to cram into my / his house before I moved into the farm house. 

One thing that dom taught me is that you never to macho to blow dry a swan baby!!!

HAHAHA.

Kela

Ah good old K. The amount of things we got up to is questionable. Never needed an excuse to have fun, even if it was just sitting on the grass talking crap. This girl may be small but her personality was massive, she gave me fudge, cookies (Thanks Kela's mom).

Lexi

O misses Charlie, we laughed and skinnered to much. LOL

Lexi can be described as hardcore, she went in the Cesar the Caracal, got half ripped to shreds came out and simply put, "I think I might need a bigger stick next time".

Between all of us, many students could have done PhD studies on our collective mental status.

I will miss these guys and think it might just be impossible to find people like this again

Not For The Faint Hearted

Being a rehab center, there where unfortunately some animals that did not make it.

If they died from unknown causes or if the animal was something new to the rehab I often did "post mortems" on the animal to learn or to try figure out what was wrong.

With the green sea turtle the disection was to learn the basic anatomical structure so if we needed to tube feed again we could see where to look and what structures to look for. Also if gasses got traped in the shell how and from where to remove them.

I also taught some of the other staff basic anatomy, so they could learn what is what and where it all lies.

Even if they never really took it seriously.

There was still mischief to be had even when dissecting a seal

My Dearest Miss Otter

As you guys know we got this fantastic Cape Clawless Otter in. 

We grew to love her, even though she smelled bad, and nearly broke my thumb.

She got the name Miss Otter.

She originally came in beacuse she was hit by a car, we managed to stabalise her and things where starting to look up. Sadly her condition got worse and despiste our best efforts, we could not save her.

I personlly want to thank Lexi, Dominque, Dumisani, and Kela for all the extra effort that you guys put in, not to mention all the extra night we had to spend with her. 

God speed Miss Otter

Not much to report back on

Not much to say. as of yet. There are ears everywhere.!!
Just enjoy the pics

Did you think I kicked the bucket??

Hey hey hey. You all though I was dead, right?? HAHAHA you were wrong!!

Sorry it’s been long since I last posted up stuff, been rather crazy times down here.
For starters I have just moved houses and had no internet connection for a while, so sitting in Plettenberg writing this. Loving the house. It’s a large three bedroom farm house in the middle of nowhere again, but this time we have a dam on our door step and the rooms are huge. Plenty room for my puppy when he comes down here.

Along with the house will come a vast array of animals naturally. We have 2 kittens, Coco and Butter. Rather cute. But I am looking at getting some guinea pigs in the near future. The cute ones for pets ugly ones sell off for food. Win win.

Some new developments!! We all love these. I am now a registered and official Western Cape tour guide and a qualified first aider. Awesome. You jealous I know you are!! As with work there has been a vast variety of animals that have come and gone from the rehab center. Most recent of all is the sea turtle that washed up, he is now back and swimming in the seas. We have also released some penguins to SAMREC, who also help rehabilitate penguins. And just yesterday we released two pigeons. Animals currently in the rehab are Barry the spotted eagle owl. HE IS AWESOME!!! Barry is suspected to have flown into an electric fence and damaged his wing but doing well. Along with him there is also another green sea turtle and penguin.

As for the rest of work. Lets say it’s going well too. Too much to speak about so will post pics for you guys

So now just to piss everyone off I am going to the beach to spend the rest of my day being non-productive!!

Till next posting, Stay Awesome

Crazy days

Hey hey all.

As some know we recently got two stranded seal pups into the rehab center. The first one that come into us was a young female Cape fur seal, who we since named Sally. Sally was a gentle soul with a “what ever” attitude.  She was always curious as to what was happening and even “Supervised” our penguin feeding. She had excellent manners and when swim time was over she would happily follow us to their housing.

The next pup came in a day later. It was a little male who we called Samson. He was the polar opposite to Sally. You could say Sampson was a hell raiser, who would sit but the glass and bark at every one that went past and if he ever got the chance he would give us a nip to just remind you that he was in control. At the end of swim time, was a different story all together, where he would taunt us by coming into the shallow area only to jump over the net and swim in the deep end.

But together they where the best of friends

Meal time was always the best time for them and would swim after the fish that we offered them

Some good news is that they have since left us and are now happily swimming back in their home waters around Robberg.

Another part of our job is taking the cheetahs for the daily walks around the perimeter of the property. They love their walks and when their harnesses come out, they are like giant kittens. The main thing to remember here is that we don’t walk the cheetahs but they walk us!!

Till next time stay tuned to who all we have in the rehab and possibly some releases coming soon!! But till then you know the drill.

STAY AWESOME DAMIT!!