21:46, Tuesday, 22 May, 2012

This morning we darted the adult female named Tilt.  I don’t know if I am bad darting luck or what, but it was another very atypical experience in that she didn’t go fully down after one dose.  Eli shot her again, and then unbeknownst to us, that one didn’t inject.  Kay very bravely walked up and shot her in the butt with some more, and she finally fell asleep. Traumatizing.  We are worried about how she will react to the car now.  Hopefully she was drugged enough that she won’t remember.

Once she was down, it was another unbelievably neat experience.  This time I got to see blood taken, and was shown how to put pressure on the neck to pop the jugular.  I recorded all the measurements taken by Michelle, and helped to hold the mouth open for the teeth measurements.  Tilt started to move her mouth and tongue a bit while we were still measuring the occlusal surface of a premolar, so I pried extra hard.  The BEAM students came by toward the end to observe the process, then I helped to carry Tilt on the stretcher to the scale (59 kg) and then the back of the car to drive her to a recovery bush.

As I was sitting staring over the seat at Tilt, it was one of those moments where you think Holy Cow, this is actually happening.  I’m riding around in a car that has a live hyena in the back of it, rubbing its forehead and adjusting the cloth over its eyes.  Wicked.

Well, we had a bit of trouble finding an appropriate spot to lay her, unsure of the present whereabouts of the resident lion pride.  An enormous herd of cape buffalo came up onto the hill where we originally planned on putting her, raising their heads defiantly, facing us with their perpetually grumpy countenance.  That wouldn’t do.  Some elephants were also nearby.  Finally we found a place where they seemed far enough away.  Carefully lifting Tilt out of the car, we laid her beneath some bushes.  We gathered branches to build a protective boma around her, made much easier since elephants had recently passed through and snapped many large branches.  One last pat, and we were off.  I only hope she’s doing fine now, running around out there with a piece of my heart.  Such a lovely girl, but man, did she smell!  We had to scrub for ages.

We found Puma, a subadult male, in Talek East territory, probably preparing to disperse.  He defecated, which I guess is very fortunate since the hormonal state of dispersing males is a hot topic.  I was reminded how to scrape poop back in camp, although I remember that one well, perhaps because smells tend to imprint particularly well on one’s memory.

Watching the bloodwork being done was super cool.  We have a centrifuge in camp, and separated out the blood into plasma, white blood cells, and red blood cells.  We took several different blood measurements and made microscope slides after drawing out white blood cells with a pipette.  Especially cool since I have seen these samples in lab; now I was on the side preparing them from raw form.  So superbly sciencey!

I did my first transcription recording tonight!  It was short and sweet, since we didn’t see many hyenas before having to head back.  It’s the rainy season that won’t stop; we got 28 ml in camp in ONE HOUR.  When we were heading back up the driveway, Michelle in the driver’s seat, we slid quite substantially to the side, and it was most hilarious: the front window did a panorama over a group of giraffes standing in a line staring at us (how embarrassing).  The way they were looking at us had us almost in tears laughing – just standing there watching us make fools of ourselves.

Well, more games tonight.  I taught everyone how to play Euchre, which only Eli had ever played, and then we played golf.  My favorite moment was when Kay was shuffling the cards, and all of a sudden starting flapping her arms and saying, “Oh no, oh no, oh help!”  We all thought something was seriously wrong, but she had only dropped a card beneath her in the sand, and was tease-worthily concerned over its getting sandy. :)

Something very large is very near the side of my tent right now.  I’m almost certain it’s an elephant! Time to lay down and listen to them.