Pooey bum

Enthusiastic morning
Today I woke up at 3.30 am. Not that I had to, I just felt refreshed and ready to rumble. Unfortunately I was the only one out of the group so I had to tame my enthusiasm and stare at the ceiling. For hours.
Nonetheless there are great adventures ahead. Katie (who is officially my bff here exactly 1 more week before she heads back to Kent to take care of her primates), Nick (who is also like one in a million character) and I are trying to do rounds at the wildlife center to spot any animals. Last night Nick and I decided to go on a walk before hitting the hay and we literally walked into a duiker (it’s a small antelope, but I think of them more like goats). How awesome is that? Although it is a national park area, most animals here are kept in enclosures (but I mean hectares of land per enclosure and no access for general public), however it is Africa and free roaming wildlife is a common sight. We still haven’t had much luck at spotting carnivores, but given that they are most active at night I will probably say our best bet is to catch them on camera traps in Kusungu.

Not-going-to-get-out-of-this-bed-ever night
I am so tired I can barely type. Nonetheless I will, because that’s the type of champ I am. Managed to see a serval today! Unfortunately only from a distance and by the time I got the camera settings right, he had moved even further. Got a fairly blurry photo, but who cares- at least I’ve got it!
Today we did scats the whole day. The system is easy: we collect hyena scats and then we weigh them, wash them, weigh them again and then separate all the matter and place different findings onto petri dishes. From there some of it will be examined under the microscope to determine the species/type of the finding. Eg vegetation, bones, hair and scales would go onto different dishes. Interesting stuff!
We then picked up some (VERY ROTTEN) chicken intestines to use them in trapping. Dry reaching is now going to be like a daily thing I think. Can’t beat that sweet, rotten flesh smell coming from the back of your car on a hot summer day. Go work with carnivores they said, it will be fun they said.

Other than that it’s been a great day. The food was on point! I am so satisfied I could dance. Ok, I would not dance but I would definitely take a long celebratory nap, lol.

I also have to get it off my chest that Katie and I discovered some mysterious human scats floating in the toilet when we returned home. We have now been taking turns trying to flush it. It’s not working. I guess we’ll just have to accept it and move on. If a floating turd in a toilet is my biggest problem then I guess I’m doing pretty well!

Miss you guys, x