Who are the (Animals) In Your Neighborhood?

Just a quick aside about some happenings in our neighborhood...

As I wrote about before, the house we're staying in is on Leadwood Big Game Estate and this estate is connected to 2 other private reserves. There are no fences between these estates so, from the animals' perspective, it is just one big private reserve. The 3 estates coordinate management of the animals. Don't get me wrong, the animals are wild. They don't get fed, the veterinarian doesn't come to take care of them, etc. Nature takes its course, so to speak, most of the time.

But there does have to be some management -- as I mentioned in the last post, the rhinos have their horns trimmed every 18-24 months or so in order to deter poachers; Somehow some animals must come and go in order to maintain genetic diversity; there has to be a careful balance between predators and prey and between herbivores and available food. I don't know how this is done -- we'll have to ask Kevin, next time we see him -- and coordinated throughout the 3 reserves. I'm sure it is pretty complicated.

And sometimes new animals are introduced into the estate. That is what just happened a couple weeks ago.

Evidently they have been trying to get hippos for a while. And there is a farmer nearby who has hippos on his farm that he doesn't want (not pet hippos -- wild hippos. And hippos, as you can imagine, eat quite a lot and can terrorize the farm workers. I can understand why a farmer wouldn't want them around). So there were negotiations as to how much the farmer wanted for these hippos. Once that was settled, they had to catch the hippos and transport them here. And, as you can also imagine, catching and transporting hippos is not that easy.

Seemingly as a bit of a surprise, the hippos were caught and brought here. So now we have 2 hippos in the neighborhood to go along with everyone else. These hippos were released into the "dam" in the neighboring reserve just to the south of us, Bloubank. It is called a dam, but as far as I can tell, it is more like a pond. There is no river flowing into it or out of it. So some water will flow into it from its catchment area and also some water is pumped into it (either from a well or irrigation pipes -- I'm not sure). We went out on a safari drive with Kevin the afternoon after the hippos arrived and went to check on them.

Kevin and Jakes, another Leadwood resident who assists Kevin in the reserve management, had dropped off a load of lucerne (a tasty, nutritious type of hay) at the side of the pond to help the hippos feel welcome. Of course, when we got there, the hippos were huddled in the middle of the water with just their noses sticking out and the elephants were there having a field day (no pun intended) with the lucerne. How did they know it was there? There are over 10,000 acres in the 3 combined reserves but the elephants found the one nice pile of tasty treats.

With their extremely dexterous trunks, the elephants were able to pick up and gobble down all the lucerne. The little elephant also had a nice roll in the mud and then they headed off into the bush. We stayed and watched the hippos -- they were definitely hunkered down, seemingly a little unsure of their new surroundings (no pictures of them yet!).

(Cute baby elephant alert!)

After a little while, we headed out to follow the elephants. We found them. At one point, one of the elephants was being a little "cheeky" and flapping his ears and stomping his foot at the jeep. Where I would have been ready to take off out of there, Kevin just spoke firmly to him, saying they needed to learn to ignore the jeeps. "You're being naughty!" and "Behave yourself." Just like you would a rebellious toddler. Sure enough, the elephant got the message and headed off with the rest of the herd.

There is another dam by the entrance to the Leadwood Estate. I would guess it is about 2-3 miles from the other dam down in Bloubank. The next morning, the hippos were found in this dam. How did they find it? Again, the combined reserve is a big area and there is not a river they could follow from one to the other. Maybe they could smell it? Or follow the game trails? However they did it, it's pretty incredible. Then, the next day, they were back in the original dam. They really get around.

We also found out, through the residents' chat group on Telegram, that over the first few days the hippos were there, many of the other animals had been spotted at the dam in Bloubank. I guess, they also wanted to check out the new residents.

Last night we were out on a drive with Kevin again and checked on the hippos. It seems they have settled in nicely. Nice to have new neighbors!

And since spring is here, babies are dropping everywhere! There's a new baby zebra, giraffe, wart hogs, and pending impalas! And rhino and monkey babies too - more about those in coming blog posts!

Baby zebra:

Baby wart hogs!: