All the crazy shit I do in South Africa and I sprain my ankle walking...lame

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I did not want to wake up today, just knowing that I had meat prep made me not want to get out of bed, but I dragged myself out and went on down to the restaurant. Yara was going to feed one of the tigers so she asked me if I could film it, since I couldn't do anything until the tigers were out of the lion enclosure anyway, I said sure. The seemingly normal morning took a terrible turn when we realized that one of the tigers, Amber did not want to get up, we had noticed she had been a little lazy yesterday, but didn't think it was really anything, there was a storm coming and we figured maybe that was it. But today we knew something was wrong when we couldn't even coax her with her bottle, and none of the lions would leave her alone. So I ran to go get Ashley and when he came down, he checked her eyes and I guess they seemed normal to him because he told us to just bring her down to the tiger enclosure, little did we know he meant take her through the gate between the two. Yara started to bring her out but she really didn't want to move, and Yara didn't really want to pull her but one girl said you're just going to have to pull her, so she did and they made it a little ways before Amber collapsed. Ashley went back down to her and looked at her gums, and she was really pale. It turns out she had tick bite fever (I'm really not too sure when Ashley did what since I was doing something else). Ashley drew blood and gave her antibiotics and Yara stayed on the steps with her until she could move. We were going to try to get her back into the lion enclosure because it was closer, but first we had to get all the lions out so we put them in with the other tigers.

I tried to clean out the lion enclosure before Amber went in because it was our job that morning, but no one would help me move a calf and I couldn't drag it by myself and we had no shovels to pick up poop. I was the last one in the enclosure trying to figure out what I could do, until Tamz called me out because Amber was too stressed and she needed complete quite.

When we were about to eat breakfast someone asked what had been done in teh lion enclosure this morning and when we told them that the calves were still there and there was poop in there someone else goes so basically you guys have done nothing. So lion people were supposed to go back down and clean it up. Knowing that I had already tried to move a calf and have it not work I knew I wasn't the best person for the job, but the other lazy ass girl in our group who I feel is only here for a photoshoot was telling me I should go do it, and I was trying to explain to her that I wasn't able to move the calf, but I would go do the poop but she kept fighting with me about how I should do it, so this other girl said she would go. So her and Pascal took the calves out and I used two buckets to get the poop out of the enclosure. We had to take the long way to the boma, which is where we put the poop and bones, because Amber had collapsed in the middle of the shortcut.

After making my way back to the restaurant and washing my hands, I had some pancakes for breakfast before heading down to do meat prep. It really wasn't bad today because we already had the big cat's meat from yesterday that we hadn't used because of the calves. We really need some good meat though, the cows are getting slaughtered but they need to get here fast, we are pretty much out of good meat, we had to resort to using the meat from the cows head which is never fun. We ended up finishing in about an hour and as we were cleaning up, we were called out to help some others move a van. The van had died and would now be in the way of other cars so we had to push. There were about 6 of us, trying to move this stupid van uphill, finally we got it up a few yards and we had to go behind and run with it downhill so we could make enough momentum to bring it uphill. Man that was hard. After that finished we continued to clean and finally made our way up to the restaurant. Turns out everyone else had to go finish the enclosure we worked on yesterday for project time.

We sat around for a little while until the others got back and then a few of us went out on the hunt for stuff to add to Kenny's enclosure because he always seems so bored and we feel bad for him (hes a caracal). Emily, Ashley and I ended up finding a nice big log and as we are struggling to pick it up Delano comes down and asks if anyone wants to come with him. I said sure and Ashley said she would come too, so I ask Delano if he can help us with this log before we leave, so he throws it on his shoulder and carries it to Kenny's enclosure. I'm pretty sure it would have taken us forever to get it there if it wasn't for him. After that's finished, Delano, Ashley and I leave to go pick up meat from the grocery store. We get anything that has expired and blocks of fat which is pretty gross, we then go on over to the butchers side and get a random assortment of stuff. I asked Delano what we were going to do with the fat and he said feed it to Mube the bushpig. Really though, that thing eats anything. The milk went bad, like really bad, and we put it in his food for the night, ugh so gross. (Don't worry Matt, I tell Mube you say hi everyday ;])

Once we finally get back, we walk up to the restaurant and I am so close to getting in and I trip over a rock, myself, whatever and I hear something in my ankle pop. Yeah that hurt. I limp over to go eat lunch all the while testing my ankle to see if it'll be okay, and it's clearly not so I go tell Tamz she said the best thing to do is just rest it. Ashley drives me back to the cabin where I chill all day/night just laying there with my foot elevated and then in the morning I test it again and its still not okay. It's not bruised or anything just swollen which is good. So I spent all day today in bed too and man did I get wicked bored, but on the plus side I'm all caught up with my blog!

Hopefully tomorrow is better, I'm on hyenas again!

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