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!