Goodbye South Africa

This is sadly my last post. It was really sad leaving and saying bye to everyone. I leave you with my last nice sighting of elephants (well, before the fam came). And, the other two pictures are taken at the riverbed where we often went for what we called "sundowners" and to all hang out. South Africa was really an amazing experience, and I hope to go back soon (mainly so I can continue blogging).

insect collection!

just to give you all an idea of the kind of work i was doing. i caught an inordinate amount of insects. we had to catch at least four samples from 20 different orders and then we had specialties in which we had to catch two specimens from 20 or so different species. My group's specialty was dung beetles (coincidence?) and we ended up pinning over 70. And i identified all of them because i am now a dung beetle expert, thank you very much. But so we would catch them in these traps and then if they seemed dead we would pin them. The problem is, dung beetles often "die" and then wake up again--especially the big ones. So one night we left three large dung beetles pinned to a piece of styrafoam on my dresser. We woke up in the morning to a scratching sound. I couldn't figure out what it was but then my friend checked the board, and sure enough, two of the dung beetles were there scratching, trying to get themselves off the board, despite the large pin through their bodies. I dont know if you caught that, but i said two. the night before there were three. it was the case of the missing pinned dung beetle who had someone removed himself and walked away with a pin through his body. not surprisingly, my room was a mess, so i went through a long search to find him. after 15 minutes there was still no sign of mr. dung beetle so i gave up. but later that day, i went to put on my shoe, and sure enough there he was. he was on his back with his legs waving frantically in the air, a large pin protruding from his body. i felt really bad--kind of. so we killed them with chloroform and pinned them for good.

P.S. In the photos you'll notice very tiny vials. These were used to house very tiny insects that we had to find in places like compost piles, etc. Some of the orders was smaller than the head of a pin. It was a little challenging.

PPS. my hairdryer really came in handy for drying the insects out! Luckily, i brought only necessary things to Africa.

The BIG Swing

I was terrified. Basically we fell backwards over the edge of a small wooden platform and plunged to what might have been out death but we were wearing harnesses. it was a 68m drop. so multiply that by three for feet. CRAZY. i went in tandem with my friend Evan, and he thought it would be so funny to see me really scared but then he ended up being just as scared. we also did a little zip line across the gorge which was gorge-ess. when we first signed up, Evan asked the woman in charge if anyone had ever died. She laughed. So we assumed no, they hadn't. We later found out that one year before, a couple, in tandem, had swung into the rocks and died.

Capturing a Rhino

toward the end of the trip, the vets of kruger park invited us to go rhino hunting with them. and by hunting i mean capturing, but we all called it hunting. basically, the park's rhinos are over carrying capacity, so the excess rhinos would not be able to survive. so instead, the park captures some of the excess and sells them to private game reserves. first a helicopter goes out searching for rhinos. when it finds them, it directs the cars to the nearest road. then, the 'copter flies really low, close to the rhino so it can shoot it with a tranquilizer, in the rear end. the rhino, freaked out then runs its best but it gets sleepier and sleepier and eventually starts stumbling and lies down. a stumbling rhino is the cutest thing i think i've ever seen. and then we go up to it and the vets take blood and stick their hands up its butt and do other tests. and then they blindfold it and tie a rope to it so they can lead it out of the bush and into the cage thing. so we all helped haul it out and it just kind of stumbled its way and walked into the cage. the cage was then hoisted onto this truck and off we went! we repeated this two other times and were done before 10am. productive morning!

A Vulture Romance

Vulture vs. Impala...well, dead impala

So once upon a time there was a dead impala (this is a type of antelope.) It died in a fight over a girl, with another male impala. (a girl worth fighting for.) So we decided to watch it incase any kind of animal came to try to eat it. first there was another impala--perhaps a greiving friend, perhaps the murderer, we'll never know. and then slowly the vultures began to appear. they came one by one to the scene and soon there were just millions. well, maybe like 30. but still. so they started tearing the impala apart and basically ate the entire thing until there was nothing but some bones and skin left. but it was cool to watch them eat because what they do is they eat as much as they can but they cant chew so then the food kind of sits in the pouch further down from their throat. the pouch has stones that the vultures has swallowed (for this purpose) that then mash up the food--like chewing. and eventually the food can go to the stomach and the vulture can eat more. so we would see all these vultures eating and then a ton of them just sitting around with huge bulges. vulture 1, impala 0.

WILD DOGS!!!

these are wild dogs. there are only two hundred or so in kruger park so it's absolutely amazing that we saw a group of them--twice! they are so cute and look/act like regular dogs. but behind that sweet exterior is a viscious beast. basically, they hunt in a pack and together eat their prey alive, bite by bite. and the bites arent even that big either. other animals like lions/leopards kill their prey immediately and then eat it. but wild dogs just run with the prey and bite off chunks until the thing eventually dies of blood loss. not a nice way to go. but at least they're cute!