Wish Day at N/a’ankuse Wildlife Sanctuary

Friday rolled around and it was my last full day, the weekend would be mainly food prep and less animal related. On your last day you have a ‘wish day’ where you can select anything you want to do.

I had already decided I’d do the big baby walk, then the tiny baby baboon walk, before having had the nightmare with Violet the night before. So, exhausted I ventured out with the big baby baboons to start my day. Wish day soon became even worse than the day before.

Walking along, the friendly big baby baboon – Bobby, decided to jump up and have me carry him as he’s done before. However, this time he decided to jump up and then bite my arm. Teeth in and pulling caused both a lump and a nasty bruise in my arm and tears to my eyes. Composing myself I just let one of the baboons groom me without complaints for the next two hours.

My arm now had marks from the goat horns and a nasty bruise on it and my hand had baby baboon bites with broken skin. Granted with all the grazes from various activities these marks almost blended in. Sad thing was I wasn’t the worst off after this walk. As we returned one of the bushmen that usually led the baboons back disappeared and the baboons went AWOL. They attacked one of the girls and she had several cuts and bites on her hand and arm.

Not such a good start to the wish day.

Tiny babies was next on the agenda and went okay, not as fun as the first time, because I wasn’t in the mood. I was over baboons.

Afternoon activities were minimised as the morning research group (only 4 people so I couldn’t join them for wish day) had gotten a brown hyena and we were releasing it that afternoon. Being the clever girl that I am I thought I was recording the release, when all I’d done it pressed the photo button once on the Go Pro in the photo mode rather than video mode. So I don’t have anything to show you of that unfortunately.

Then it was a rushed and rainy carnivore feed to round off my wish day.

It was late when we returned and after cleaning the bloody containers and compost buckets we then ventured out to the wild dogs feeding. The 13 wild dogs are almost identical and make an incredible noise when they are fed. Returning back late just myself and one other girl were left to then clean all the bloody buckets and containers from the wild dogs feeding.

It was a long and exhausting day. Not a pleasant one by any stretch of the imagination, but I did get to see a few beautiful animals at the end of the day.