Week 274 (21st Nov- 27th Nov 2008 )
Another exciting week
21 November: This morning Hulooo was running around like a lunatic whilst we were spraying water around the breeding centre preparing to scrub the floor and then I happened to direct the stream of water through the mesh at Hulooo. He pulled back his lips all around in a sort of grimace exposing ALL his teeth and stood for a while with his jaws together and the water beating on his teeth. He breathed some water in inadvertently and indulged in a fit of sneezing before returning to the water and biting it with the tiny teeth in front of his mouth.
22 November: Earlier this afternoon, I drove through the 40ha camp, looking for TigerWoods and Cathay. Instead of finding tigers, I found two dead Blesbok. The one looked as if it had been struck by lightning and the other looked like one of the tigers caught it…. It had some bite marks in the neck, and claw marks in the hind leg and front leg, the weird thing though was that the tigers didn’t feed on it. Later this afternoon, Cathay was lying next to the fence of the 40ha camp. She was not in the mood to come and greet me. TigerWoods made his appearance and chuffed for a little while. He paced the 40ha fence for a little while, before settling down.
23 November: Today is Hulooo’s first birthday. We gave Hulooo an extra piece of meat as a birthday present and he was suitably impressed, slurping it out from under the mesh and chewing loudly. Also seeing as it was his birthday we forgave him for peeing in the breeding centre and also for dragging their leftovers inside.
24 November: Madonna was again pacing the nine hectare fence with her cubs following her as fast as their little legs could run. Often when she was too far ahead and their legs couldn’t run anymore they just plonked their butts down and waited for her to return.
25 November: 327 was trying to follow the vehicle as we drove around the 40ha camp but kept on finding a fence in the way. When we eventually came out of the camp he looked at us quizzically and moaned, we told him that it wasn’t feeding time yet but he followed the vehicle back towards the breeding centre anyway and to his delight found Madonna waiting for him. He was genuinely happy to see her and answered every one of her chuffs with one of his own, when the cubs didn’t come out to visit he ambled off to find some shade to lie in.
26 November: 327 is permanently hungry and today like every other day he followed the vehicle as I drove past and waited expectantly for me to feed him. When he found that he was not going to get any food he moaned profusely and stomped off to tell Madonna all about it after exchanging many chuffs.
27 November: 327 came to the fence of the 3ha camp to greet me. He looked very dirty and full of mud. When he walked with me, he moaned a lot and told me all the gossip stories in the camps. When we got to the 40ha camp, 327 started pacing the fence of the 40ha camp. He was chuffing at Cathay and TigerWoods. Only Cathay chuffed back at him. After a while, he walked of to lie down under a bush.