March 6, 2012: Never a dull moment at Khulula!

Hi All,
Monday started off normal enough, up at 5:15, fed the white lion cubs at 6:00 and fed the rest of the the cats at 8:00. Marc and I were cleaning the caracal enclosure when Marc exclaimed, Figa has escaped! Figa, one of the young lions, had managed to escape from her enclosure through a gate that wasn't secured well and was now running loose. Fortunately, Figa did not stray too far away from her enclosure mates Sam and Kiara. When she disappeared into the bush, they would call her back to the cage. We weren're sure how to get her to go back in willingly. After about an hour she decided freedom wasn't as good as being with Sam and Kiara and she went in on her own. Smiley, one of the local workers ran up and closed the gate before she could get back out. Whew, that was a close call! We all learned an important lesson - make sure all gates are securely closed.

During all the commotion of Fig's field trip, Petronel received a call on her cell phone, that the guys who came to pick up the recycling, made off with our brand new shovels. Things settled back down and as we were preparing the evening meals, Catherine, one of the volunteers rushed back into the prep room exclaiming "there's a snake out there!" When we peered around the corner we saw a cobra in the house! It was only about 3 feet long but, still scary. It escaped outside under the screen door and wenet down a hole. Wayne, a local hired to work on the road came to help. He put some lye down the hole to get the snake to come out or at least to keep it from coming back. He said it wouldn't hurt the snake just keep it away. We haven't seen the cobra since, thank god.

We went back to our chores and Petrolnel comes in to tell us there were giraffe on the road to the house! Some of the volunteers had never seen a giraffe and were very excited to finally see one. we piled into Petrolnel's pick up and went down the road to see them There was a herd of six and most of us (my camera battery died) got some nice pictures. Needless to say, I turned in early after a very exciting and exhausting day at Khulula. That's it for now. Hope everyone is well back home.

Peggy and (Marc)