My first day at Sondela's "Wildlife Centre"

"Bright Eyed and Busy Tailed"

That is how I would describe this young Nyala bull whom charasmaticly flashed me a buck-toothed (No Pun intended) grin just as the flash went off.

He is one of many Orphaned/Ill/Adopted young animals that can be found at Sondela's Wildlife Centre. I luckily got to spend my very first day there, where I got to meet many tame and not so tame animals. We also released a Water Mongoose who was causing havoc on a neighbouring farmers cattle who he then trapped and sent to us to release.We drove with the little guy to a green marshland type of field and tried to release him. But Mr. Mongoose decided he wasn't about to be pushed about by a group of simple humans, so hissing and spitting he stayed in his crate.

After various pushes and taps on the crate, this huge fuzzy cat-like creature sped out making us all jump and one or two of us yelp. The fuzzy little mongoose I had in mind turned out to be a huge growling animal who has found himself a great home with many friends. After that Episode we all drove back to the Centre to get the feed ready for the animals. Twenty-five minutes later I found myself hacking up bits of Warthog for the cheetahs and other wild cats. Bottles were made, meat was weighed and jobs were given out.
My next mission was to feed a mother Rhino and her not so little baby, I tried to play the distraction by thumping on an empty food crate as my friend ran in to grab the empty feeding buckets. But, instead of attracting the Rhonos as I had planned to, I had Cheeky and Layla the two tame Zebra's follow me, eager for a snack.

Trying to stop them from eating my jumper, and attracting the Rhino's proved to me futile so we gave up and bravely and calmly rounded up the buckets.
After bottle feeding the young buck and Zebra we tossed large chunks of meat to the cats, who just before dinner made their hunger known by spitting, hissing and performing jumps that would make a trapeez artist blush. Then the cleaning, wiping and scrubbing began. Everything has to be in prestine condition because these animals deserve the best.

And so ended my busy and exciting day of feeding, petting and fending off the Ostrich who decided that she wanted to eat my cell-phone. So, all in all my day was fantastic.