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Published: July 18th 2006
Week 2:
After a bit of a delay due to car problems (which is no big surprise here) we headed to Queen Elizabeth NP on Monday. It was a long drive but we could see that even arriving in the dark it was a beautiful park!
We settled in our tents and had a slightly unrestful sleep during our first night after being warned not to leave the tent in the dark due to the lions that like to hang out nearby. By the end of the week we had finally gotten used to hearing hippos and hyenas outside (not within visible distance but still pretty loud) but were still definitely not leaving the tent for a midnight pee break! We spent the week with Dr. Siefert working on his large predator project. Most of our days were spent around driving around the park with tracking equipment looking for lions- you would think they would be easy to find considering they're wearing radio collars! We had intended to find one of the 2 male lions living in the park to change his radio collar but unfortunately weren't able to access him all week. We did however find 2 lionesses at different
times during the week that we were able to dart and work on. It was incredible! The whole process takes about an hour and we got to do all sorts of data collection. For the non-vet types skip the next paragraph:
For darting we used a dart gun that actually looks and functions quite similar to a paintball gun! He used a combination of Telazol and Medetomidine and it took 10-20 minutes for them to be down enough for us to work on them. The reversal at the end was Naloxone and Atipamizole. The cost per lion is aroudn $1/kg for drugs so a male lion often cost $200 for one procedure! Once the animal was completely asleep we took a general TPR, assessed body condition and took photos of any scars, defining markings and dentition, blood is collected for a smear and feces for parasite analysis. Ticks are also collected for analysis. The whole process from start to when the reversal is given is about 50 minutes- it goes by really fast! It was really neat because on one of the lions we saw the blood smear and it had a heartworm microfilaria! There hasn't been any research
done on heartworm in lions but Dr. S said he hasn't seen very many. We also darted a hyena using a blow pipe and collected much of the same data. I even got to take blood! Overall, a very cool experience.
Ok, back to the rest of you. Our days were very long as we were often up before 7am and didn't get to be until after 1am. The mornings were spent tracking lions and the evenings hyenas. One day we were up at 6 and didn't get to bed until 3 the following morning, only to get up at 6 again! As we spent our days driving around we were able to see a lot of the park and many of the animals within it. The park is part of the Great Rift valley and is full of hills and crater lakes, it’s very beautiful. We saw lots of wildlife including a leopard, hippos and tons of bird species.We also finally saw our elephants (we were starting to wonder if we were going to come to africa and never see elephants!). There was even one wild elephant that just walked around the area by the lab- it's amazing how destructive they are-they will take down whole trees!
Ok, have to end this one quick as the power's gone off and the computer's about to crash. Update soon
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Sam
non-member comment
Hey
Hey Michelle, Sounds like you are having an amazing time!! It sounds amazing and is definitly something I wish I could do! Just wondering when you are coming home? Hopefully we'll get to see you soon!!! (by the way i'm getting my braces off in 2 days!!! ahhh excited!!)