Well considering what the date will be next Sunday, I doubt I'll be writing an update then so I'd better say it now: MERRY CHRISTMAS! I cannot believe it's Christmas already - even with decorations, Christmas songs, and an advent calendar on the go, my head will not click that this is December. Christmas is not supposed to be shorts and t-shirt weather! Doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to it though...! We'll be heading up to the boss' house for dinner, games and secret santa I think, so should be a good time. I am going to be naughty and suggest the ALERT website as a good online store for last minute Christmas presents! Considering the current financial situation, every purchase will be much appreciated by both us and the lions! (http://www.cafepress.com/lionalert)

I've had another good week, though very frustrating with the current car situation. We have 4 cars on the project,  but our research vehicle (Doris) is totally dead - the starter is gone entirely, and that's after you already had to hot wire then push start it to get it going! With the single cab also out of action, we have no way of going out on Elephant Research drives. This means more Dambwa time, more Elephant ID time, and a lot less time in the National Park! Can't really complain though - firstly I'd rather be in the office than in a vehicle we can't trust to start when elephants get too close (we've already had to get out and push start Doris once when there were elephants only about 30 m away!) - and secondly it means more lion time! Elephant IDs are also very useful - we are still on the sightings from 14th August so it will be a long time before we catch up! Or rather, we won't catch up before I have to go to the Zimbabwe side of the falls and leave the researcher to do it alone... The current aim  is to simply reach the elephant sightings that I was actually in Zambia for, before I have to leave! I still don't know which elephant was the first I ever saw - I have to get the chance to do that ID!

Having said that, we have managed a couple of Research sessions. The first was an unscheduled one on Tuesday, when one of our drivers came in and told us there was an injured elephant up the road. We went to look, and found a young pubescent female elephant with an extremely swollen front right leg. Upon closer inspection, we determined it was the young one we found with Breeding Herd 7 a few weeks back, that had a snare tight around that leg. The good news is that the Wildlife Authority were able to successfully dart her and remove the wire. The bad news is that she is now a young elephant by herself, and that the wound appears to be infected.... I hope we're able to keep an eye on her... We also did research on Saturday afternoon, but not an especially exciting session - having had no vehicle earlier than Saturday, and being extremely time pressured to do the entire session during our lunch break in order to get the car back to Dambwa, we were on high speed dung decay survey only! We ignored the couple of bushbuck that we saw despite the fact that our survey is still going, and we just drove form dung to dung taking measurements and leaving again! However, we successfully got through all the ones we were aiming to do, so a job well done.

I don't think that's a road...

We had our last session of Conservation Education at Maunga School on Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately, again the car situation made it somewhat less successful - we are supposed to leave the office at 11:30 and start at 14:00, but thanks to the lack of cars, we were't able to head out until nearly 14:30, and then the rains meant that we had to go the long way around, rather than simply fording the Sinde River... We didn't arrive until almost 15:30 so only managed a 40 minute session with 2 of our planned 5 games. However, the 8 students we had really engaged and seemed to enjoy it, while also learning some new words so it was still worth it. Coming back was great fun as we decided to attempt a shortcut... and got the 1 working car stuck in sand... in a place with no phone signal... when we were already late...! Thankfully, with a lot of work on our driver's part, we managed to get out without having to walk a mile to somewhere where we could use the phone! Did make us very late home though, and once we were out we were driving at breakneck speed down winding dirt roads with a lot of sharp overhanging trees in an open vehicle! Let's just say that dodging is something you get very used to when driving around here!

Teaching the kids to play Hangman

Snare sweep on Friday morning was not especially successful, but very eventful. We only found 4 snares, and of those 3 were very old. However, while there may have been no snares to look out for, there were certainly animals! We always have an armed wildlife officer with us when doing snare sweeps - it would be too dangerous without - and let's just say that this week I was very glad of him, even if he still never had to actually use his AK-47! The first thing we had to avoid was a group of buffalo up ahead of us, so we turned east and moved to a slightly different patch of land. We saw another buffalo later on but that one ran away, so we only had to make a slight alteration with that one. The second sighting was very sad - it was a young one with a snare around its front leg, and the leg was completely limp and just flopping around uselessly as it ran away on the other 3 legs. Very sad... However, the cool part was about halfway through when the handler walking next to me suddenly stopped, and quickly told me to pass the "nobody move" message down the line! By now I'm very used to looking through the thick undergrowth for animals, but I certainly had no idea there was a White Rhino only about 40 m ahead of us! The rhinos are totally free to move around the park as they choose, but the Wildlife Authority feed and water them in the Northern Section where you cannot go without an Officer, in order to protect them more easily from poachers. Being nowhere near the Northern Section, it was a huge surprise to see one down there! That individual is now fully protected again in the Southern Section, and will hopefully rejoin his friends soon.

Zulu

And finally, lions! I've had a great lion week... Monday was Dambwa Research which we actually did from outside the release site because the lions were all lined up along the fence by Main Gate, and there was very little point going in when there was a better view from outside! Having said that, for the first time when I've been on research the lions decided it was time to move! They got up and walked along the fence, apparently stalking an impala, but being so lazy about it the impala saw them from so far away he didn't even bother to run! They lay down again further along, forcing us to move the car, only for them to move back again 20 minutes later! In the mid morning session they were not quite so active, but Zulu came very close to the car, giving us a fantastic sight of the big man himself! Zulu is a big lion, and he's very tall, plus both the females (Rusha and Leya) who had cubs are big too, so the sub-adults are all going to be big lions when they're fully grown! Certainly RS2 is going to be even bigger than Zulu, so that should hopefully help him when he's released. Saturday was also a Dambwa Research day (again we had no cars free so we couldn't make it to Kids Club) and again this was a particularly good session! For the first 45 minutes of the hour-long activity budget they did nothing but sleep, then suddenly Zulu puts his head up and starts grunting. We didn't need to be told twice when the Lion Researcher told us "Everybody get your cameras out"! I was surprised to see they didn't bother to stand up, but rather lay down and the whole pride began to roar together, which of course also set off the lions in the enclosures too! They roared for about 2 minutes, then suddenly the action started and they all got up, started greeting each other, playing, and in Kwandi's case telling off Zulu for trying to mount her! Then with 3 of the girls leading the way (Zulu closely following Kwandi still!) they all moved and headed off into the release site. As it turned out when we went back after breakfast, they didn't get very far... But still, there was some movement and they all paraded their way past the car which was awesome to see! Not however, as awesome as Thursday afternoon... I'd already spent the morning helping out first with enclosure lion research, watching the reactions of different lions to having lemon rubbed all through their enclosures, and then with Dambwa research, observing the grooming behaviour of the pride. The afternoon meant it was time for a scavenge. The Dambwa pride do not have a fixed feeding schedule, as ALERT are trying to mimic the natural "feast and famine" pattern that they would have in the wild. Having not had anything for a while, the lions were quite thin. More importantly, the 2 dominant lions (Zulu and Rusha) were looking thinner than would be expected, so rather than the normal "drop the meat and leave" that they do on a scavenge, this time we stayed to watch to see if maybe there was more fighting (especially from RS2 being the second biggest lion after Zulu) than normal or something else had changed in the group. Watching the scavenge was amazing. We actually had to go and find them as they were taking a long time to find it and we didn't want to waste the meat on the vultures. It's incredible how quickly a vulture can pick clean a piece of meat! When they arrived, they were running, and Zulu instantly went for the best pieces and chased the others off before collecting his chosen chunks into a big pile. They quickly dragged pieces off into the bushes, leaving our truck totally surrounded by lions. They make an incredible noise as they eat too. When they were done, they would come looking for more pieces, coming really close to the truck! Only 2 of the lions seemed to notice how much the truck still smelled like blood and meat... and how the weird 2 legged animals that were on said truck were totally unprotected! But it was ok - a sharp "HEY!" and they backed off again! Such an incredible afternoon!

Bisa checking out the lemon smell

White backed vulture coming in for the Scavenge

Zulu arriving at the Scavenge

RS3 with her Bat Ears!

RS2 fully focused

LE3

Zulu tucking in to his mountainous feast!

Let me just sharpen my claws....

LE3 handsome boy again!

RS2 <3

So that's been my week again, and I'll post again in 2 weeks time! Merry Christmas everyone! I apologise for my terrible skills with photo positioning.... again....