But even on discovering this fact, our days were far from dull. Every day, each of the four groups of volunteers had a set of animals that they fed and cared for while on the farm. Being a part of Group One, we had the pleasure of hand feeding the teenage lions. Our first encounter of this kind involved feeding them whole springbok heads. Delicious! Nothing like entering an enclosure with five, almost fully grown, hungry lions, carrying five meaty antelope heads. Luckily, and it was mostly luck, we only had one incident with them the entire time that I was there, where two of the lions didn’t climb on the platform to be fed, but instead chose to run at myself and another volunteer that were holding their donkey steaks for the day, ripping the meat straight from our hands. Talk about getting the heart racing! I’ve never been so close to having my hand shredded by razor sharp lion claws before. Though, in saying that, I did have one of those claws imbedded into my calf two weeks later. Was my own fault really, the lioness had become too comfortable with my petting and had stretched out her paw in pleasure. My leg happened to be in the way as she did this and I had to then retract her claw from said leg. Not too much blood and unfortunately no ‘impressive’ scar followed. Dennis on the other hand, had more intimate encounter with all five furry playmates...
Speaking of scars, I found that the majority of my injuries were inflicted, not by the animals, but by the farming equipment, fences and gates, and the many thorny acacia trees and spiny shrubbery. Though the baboons did try to even the score on more than one occasion. The holes in my shirt and the shredded pant leg of my shorts can attest to that. But what girl doesn’t enjoy a good excuse to buy new clothes? Me of course, but that’s beside the point.
Ok, the point... umm… there isn’t one so I’ll just tell you about the paintball match that we had. Using slingshots out in the ‘scrap yard’ where Klippy the giraffe called his home, a manic battled raged. The Aim: For one team to steal the tyre from the opposing team and get it back to their base. Easier said than done my friends, given that it was a tractor tyre and required three people to carry it! There were many honourable and not so honourable deaths that day, but the beauty of paintball is that given enough time to recover, you come back to life! Huzah! And after four or five rounds (about an hour) of 50 plus people yelling and screaming, rolling in the dirt and sliding behind trees to avoid those lethal balls of paint, Paul and I finally managed to carry and roll the damn tyre 100m back to our fort and finally claim an exhausting victory!! *Does a little jig*
But of course, that not nearly being enough, and having plenty of paintballs left, we pretty much had a free for all for the next hour or so, diving in and out of ditches as a blur of pink and orange orbs flew through the air, often hitting their target, whether it be foe or ally, it need not matter. Talk about an enthusiastic way of getting sand into every conceivable crevice. Not to mention the fact that we had a two story tall giraffe to contend with that was a little on the aggressive side. Running from tree to tree was your best bet given that the branches blocked his path. Feeding time however, was a different matter. He became as placid as a kitten.
Ok, so I’ve successfully brought you up to speed on the third day of my stay, only 25 days to go!
Day Four: The battle of the raging bush fire…
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