News - November 2008CONTACT US:
"HERDING CATS" Dear All It is the hour before dawn at the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary. Once again Zimbabwe is in the news; this time we are reeling under a massive health crisis while hospitals stand shut and silent. We now add the endless transportation of clean drinking water for the workers' compound to our multitudinous tasks. Kadiki the lion roars into the last of the darkness and the hyenas whoop in chilling chorus. Outside the fence line there is a jackal calling, and the liquid notes of a fiery-necked night jar fall from the moonlit shadows. The sky is incandescent with stars as I stand at my window and gaze at a spotted genet slipping silently through the remnants of the night; a glimpse so fleeting it seems merely the ethereal fragment of a dream. Desperate for food, she has sought shelter in the Sanctuary, bringing her emaciated little kittens in one by one and stowing them carefully in a thorny fortress beneath a giant cactus in the crocodile enclosure. Myself and my assistant have already been up once in the night, to catch a huge python that had slithered into the goose pen and caused a frantic, feathery fracas. The donkeys start to gather at my gate, kicking it to make the cow bell jangle in the hope that breakfast may come a little sooner. The caracals shift deeper into the duvet, insidiously spreading across the small space I have vacated. By 7am the herbivores have been fed and every animal has clean water and the remnants of the predators' dinner from the previous night have been cleared away. Due to power cuts of between 18 to 20 hours every day, water is a constant battle for us as we cannot run our water pump for long enough. The ancient pump can no longer run at full capacity either and every drop goes to watering and cleaning the animals which has to be our priority. We are currently embarking on a fund-raising project to refurbish our entire water sytem. Our thanks to Larry Pope of Landpro, Arthur Shultz of A & T Engineering, Adriano Gorassini of Yo Africa, Lara Williams, Rose and Rogan McClean, Moira Potgeiter, Clive McClean, First Class Nursery School and Snowy Neves for assistance with this project so far. St Elmo's Restaurant is also supporting this project by supplying us with a desperately-needed new hosepipe and will also be getting involved with our Predator Feeding Scheme. I take the dogs up to the highest point above the Sanctuary where, if I balance on a stone at the very top, I get cell phone signal, and begin to make the many calls necessary each day to procure food for the animals. We have 100 children visiting in the morning to learn about conservation and our work at the Sanctuary. We also have a ton of stockfeed to collect, a dead cow to recover from a farm 150 kilometres away and great news, Crugs Chooks is operational again so we can collect chicken mortalities for the small predators. Darryl from Koala Park Abattoir (a regular donor and friend to the lions) phones - he has meat for the predators, and a message comes through that a dead zebra must be recovered that morning. Without the network of people who assist us to feed our magnificent predators, we simply could not cope. Karen and Stacey Gent, Alexandra and Sophie Bean, Annabel and Oscar Gritz, Steve Curle, Linda Chant, Mark and Cora Ruck, Mr and Mrs Chamney, Vicky Campion, Catherine Carter, Anna Jones, Rhonnie Masterson, Beverley Bridger, Scott Parker, Josh, Matthew and Cassia Middleton, Jon and Joan Langerman, Vera Taylor, Dr Kim Biffen, Denise and Pete, Tracey Beukes, Stoff Hawgood and all the people who take the time to get hold of us when they have meat for us - we are so grateful to you. The vehicles set off, past the donkeys and horses grazing peacefully in the dusty October sunlight, past Kylie the hyena splashing blissfully in her bathtub (after I had a sponge bath this morning to save water....) and with a final sonorous salute from the lions we are on the road. I head off to a fruit and vegetable wholesaler to collect a load of waste vegetables, where I routinely load the truck myself as they dont have staff to spare. I am used to the startled, sideways glances from passers-by as I trudge back and forth with crates of produce past their sell-by date and ruefully remember the days when I would set off to work in a suit and high heels and considered having to empty my own waste-paper basket as getting my hands dirty. Having had a small jackal escape from my basket in the hairdresser's and been evicted from a well-known coffee shop for feeding serval cats at the table (resulting in a hastily hand-written notice being hammered to the door by an irate proprietor that stated coldly, NO pets, OF ANY KIND, allowed...), I have experienced public censure before about the sometimes anti-social requirements of taking care of the Sanctuary animals but some days I deal with it better than others. I think the penultimate experience was breaking down a few years ago with a vast and odiferous carcass in the back of an open truck outside the most exclusive boys' school in Harare. As I slumped morosely on the bonnet of our battered truck, waiting for the mechanic and feigning supreme nonchalance as I smoked a cigarette and tried to ignore the very obvious fact that the carcasse was expanding by the minute in the hot sun and attracting the ecstatic attention of battalions of flies, a rigidly coiffed lady in a gleaming 4 x 4 roared up, screeched to a halt beside me, buzzed down her electric window with one manicured fingernail and shrieked in well-modulated horror, "How dare you park here with that thing! Move immediately!" I am afraid my response is unprintable. Suffice to say she buzzed her window back up again pretty smartly, took my imaginatively worded suggestion to heart and departed in haste..... We are still cutting up meat as the sun sets behind the Sanctuary. We are somewhat behind schedule due to the arrest (AGAIN) of our long-suffering driver for "stock theft"... getting stopped at a police roadblock on the wrong day with a load of meat for the lions usually results in one or the other of us spending a couple of infuriating hours at a police station. There is a great saying to describe trying to achieve the impossible; "Herding cats". Some days running the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary feels very much like we are trying to do just that! Twilight brings the owls who sit above us fluttering feathery eyelids and murmuring their endless nocturnal question, "Who, who..Who?". The mongooses scurry past on their way to bed in the feed shed. We switch on the truck headlights so we can see to finish our task and the caracals pace impatiently, big-eared shadows shifting restlessly behind them. In the nursery the goats and their new, velvet-soft babies are asleep, the chickens perched above them clucking softly to themselves. We load the final deep freezer and it is a good feeling to know we have enough meat for a fortnight for the predators. I drive down the road to take the staff home and leave food for the plains game we are caring for on the other side of the road. The last few zebra will be darted and relocated soon I hope. Their shadowy forms loom out of the darkness as they hear my truck - it has taken weeks to overcome their terrible fear of people after the horrors they have experienced in the last year and still now they remain cautious, quivering and stamping with nerves. The game park which is the only home they have ever known is now ploughed under and a systematic operation to cut down all the trees has begun. They have very little natural food or shelter left and most of the fencing has been stolen. David Behr of Z.O.L has kept this project mobile with his continued generous support, Di Fynn arranged 50 bales of hay, Johnny Rodrigues of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force has, in conjunction with the SAVE Foundation of Australia, provides the necessary veterinary drugs, Drs Keith Dutlow and Lisa Marabini of the AWARE Trust donate their valuable time and expertise, as does Dr Vinay Ramlaul of the Twenty Four Hour Veterinary Hospital, Niren Ramlaul donates transport and his time and Paul Denslow of Shumba Millers, Anne Lowe, Sue Roberts and Sue Calasse have made it possible to feed the zebras every day. Then the day is over and I return home to my family of caracals who instantly drag me into a bitter dispute over who should have the new green corduroy crocodile to tear to pieces. After trying in vain to replace Furfax, Harry's treasured toy lion, by placing an order with a cross-border shopper ("medium-sized lion - mane and whiskers essential") that never materialised, I had to make do with what I could find on a whirlwind trip of our own across the border to buy essentials for the Sanctuary. Having attracted the intense scrutiny of the assistant and then the security guard in a toy shop after I had spent several minutes yanking at the limbs and heads of various cuddly toys to test their Caracal Resistance, I had to buy whatever was closest to hand... Their other toys lie on the floor - a supposedly indestructible rubber ball in a thousand mangled shreds and the tattered torso of a rag doll. I later find the arms and legs in the vegetable garden, together with my hair brush and the remnants of a book I had been looking forward to reading. It looks as if the fall-out is continuing from daring to arrange a surprise party for Dr Ramlaul's birthday to thank him for always being there for us..... The caracals strongly disapprove of any sort of levity anyway, but when the levity involves Dr Ramlaul, they simply wont tolerate it at all. As there are never any groceries in my house apart from coffee and the makings of toast jammed into the fridge amidst the plethora of veterinary medicines, herbal remedies, yoghurt for the marmosets, and Harry the caracal's box of hard-boiled eggs, the arrival of armloads of food for human consumption was treated with immediate and aggressive suspicion. Twala squatted fatly upon the microwave to monitor my every move whilst Harry leapt on top of the fridge and hung over the edge so that he could swat me round the head every time I tried to put something inside. Arthur guarded the front door, one large hairy paw casually extended in the hope that I might trip and break a leg and put an end to any festivities forthwith. I can now recount various facts about caracals that I did not know prior to Dr Ramlaul's surprise party: Firstly, it only takes one (plump) female caracal to crush a tray of 30 eggs. It takes a week to scrape dried egg yolk off the furniture and an entire bottle of Kaolin Pectin to treat a caracal suffering from acute gastritis due to the consumption of at least half the eggs. Secondly, a caracal can eat five kilograms of chicken (marinated in garlic, lemon and rosemary) and two packets of sausages in the time it takes for me to set a sheep's broken leg (see later story). Thirdly, under no circumstances whatsoever should I ever think that the caracals will allow me to transform myself from a disheveled, dusty, khaki-clad person sporting large brown boots and several broken finger nails to a scented socialite in a summer frock and French manicure, greeting guests with a tinkling laugh and a chilled G & T. This is because a) A caracal will have a panic attack as I am getting into the bath - administration of Rescu Remedy and soothing massage to hyperventilating predator takes twenty minutes. By now the bathwater is cold and the geyser is empty because we have a power cut. Crouching over a small bucket of cold water dabbing about with a remnant of sponge (caracals ate the rest weeks ago) is not exactly a Badedas moment.... b) A caracal will jump up my back with all its claws out making the donning of backless summer frock inadvisable. c) The painting of toe nails is perceived by all 3 caracals as a quaint activity devised for their entertainment. There is cotton wool to unravel, eat and choke on. (Just try performing the Heimlich Manouevre on an animal that can jump four metres in the air whilst trying not to mess your hair or smudge your lipstick....) There is acetone to spill on the table and get on their feet so that they all have to be held down and washed (resulting in further reasons not to bare any flesh in said summer frock), and then there is nail polish...I try to tell myself that all the best people are sporting animal hair embedded in their manicure this summer and that no one will notice my one bleeding toe but of course instead of guests gushing about my glamorous transformation, they all ask immediately, "What happened to your toe?" As my toes are virtually the only part of my body visible after a major sartorial re-think, I suppose this is understandable. Oh, and by the way there was no ice because of the power cut, and no tonic because there hasn't been any in Zimbabwe for at least a year so that put an end to the G & T too. Mark Walker and his family keep Harry the caracal in the style he insists upon. Room service, personal shopper and stylist (that would be me...), eccentric dietary demands (vanilla yoghurt and cold herbal tea are the current favourites of this particular super-predator), he even has his own bling - a string of pink and gold beads that he chases about the house and then leaves for me stand on in the dead of night in my bare feet. Yet another of our Bally Vaughan Sanctuary members owes her life to Dr Ramlaul and the staff at the Twenty Four Hour Veterinary Hospital. One of our dearly loved sheep, Margaret, the offspring of our original sheep rescued from a farm, gave birth in the early hours of the morning to a tiny white lamb. Having then suffered a prolapsed uterus, we found her lying in a pool of blood with her little baby shivering wretchedly at her side. We were advised to put Margaret to sleep, much to my distress. A call to Dr Ramlaul followed and he agreed to take a look at her. I raced into Harare with Margaret and the lamb in the back of my car and for two agonising hours the staff at the surgery battled to save her. We are grateful to Dr Abe Murondoti for his expertise and advice. Carol Hobbs, my friend indeed, responded to yet another crisis by rushing to the surgery to take care of the baby who was now severely dehydrated and distressed. (Little did she know that later that same day she would be called upon to panel-beat my car, milk a sheep and pick a field of broccoli, all of which she did with great aplomb, and without ruining her French Manicure.) Having just recovered from that obstetric drama, our male sheep Maurice then fell and broke his leg a week later. Splinting his leg was an aerobic work-out in itself but fortunately he has made a good recovery and his mishap has, for the moment, curbed his unnatural and disturbing interest in our lady goats.....(he has perfected the art of sauntering away from his unsuspecting woolly family and doing a fabulous double take when he happens upon the goats...the ovine version of "Hello there! Dont I know you from somewhere....). A wolf in sheep's clothing indeed! The Sanctuary volunteers continue to support us whole-heartedly. Sylvia Carter, Carol Hobbs, Les Ives, Dianne Twiggs, Leanne Friel (Flea), Mandy Sim and Kelvin Lindup, Sharon Nichols help to care for our beloved animal family in so many ways and our lives would be so much less without them. My thanks to Lesley Duncan of Y.P.O for giving me the opportunity to raise awareness of our work at the Sanctuary at the "Saving Starfish" event, to Waylon Lewis for arranging school trips to the Sanctuary and to Jan Prinsloo of Avondale Veterinary Surgery for a generous donation and for offering to be a collection point for the Sanctuary. Thank you to Cathy Buckle for so generously giving advice on our plans to turn this newsletter into a book. We believe this could be an effective fund-raising project and would be grateful for any assistance that anyone out there could provide on getting this published! And thanks to Meryl Harrison, friend and defender of all animals, for her support, advice and inspiration. We are thrilled to announce the birth of baby banded mongooses at the Sanctuary. As the babies are fiercely guarded by the entire family in an underground den for the first two weeks of their lives, we have only caught glimpses of five tiny, sleekly-furred babies. With the first rains falling, the drain the mongooses had chosen as a nursery is now damp and cold so yesterday they moved the babies to an anthill. We had to act as traffic wardens; holding back dogs and cats, donkeys and geese as the mongooses first worked out the safest route to take, assessing the risks by standing bolt upright on their stumpy back legs and turning round in circles, whilst Dancer, the matriarch, waited with her little brood inside the drain. One adult was left on sentry duty at the new den while the other adults transported the babies in their mouths with much anxious squealing and furious growling at the other animals. At last the little family was safely in their new home - another generation of Bally Vaughan Sanctuary mongooses to share our lives. Alongside the joy that comes with successful rescues and rehabilitations, lives saved and babies born into the safe haven that is the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary, there are times of heartbreak and despair, times when the task seems so much bigger than our meagre resources and when faith and optimism are hard to sustain. Losing little creatures for any reason is always hard to deal with but witnessing the death of an emaciated hand-raised lion cub recently haunts me. Her final tiny, plaintive cries in the voice that should have grown up to be a roar will be with me always. Please think twice before you participate in activities involving hand-raised big cats. Question why the lion cub that you bottle-feed and pose with for posterity is not being raised by its mother, and ask yourself, "What is its future?" "The greater cats with golden eyes Vita Sackville West In the same week we rescued a brown dog that had been deliberately run down by a commuter omnibus. As she scrabbled and screamed in the road, her teats engorged with milk for puppies we could not find, one man emerged from the gaping crowd and helped us wrap her in a blanket and carry her to the car. Despite our best efforts, she died from internal injuries. We had called her Deidre. We are very grateful to Michelle Hein for her compassion and kindness in helping so generously with trying to save Deidre. Two days later a tiny cockatiel came in. Probably a pet that flew away, she had been captured by someone who tied a length of wool around her leg and hung her upside down on the side of the road to sell her. Rescued by a passer-by, when she came to us she was paralysed with shock and fear, her tongue so swollen from dehydration her beak could not close. She died a little while later. Whenever we fight and fight to save an animal, make silent pleas for a miracle, try through sheer will to keep them alive because we love them so much, and then we lose the battle, we lose a little part of ourselves. And we can only hope that the next baby born, the next succesful rescue, the next owl released into the night sky; that these wonderful things will replenish what was lost and give us the strength to fight the next fight. The wildlife artist Cora Ruck and her family recently rescued a Batleur eagle with a broken wing. As this was the first eagle we had taken in at the Sanctuary it has been a huge challenge to rehabilitate him. Dr Ramlaul successfully set his broken wing and I took him home to nurse him. I seriously under-estimated his immense strength when I put my hand into the cage to move him. With one lightning move he seized my hand with a set of viciously sharp talons, neatly punctured the flesh down to the bone and crushed my hand so hard that I almost fainted. A few hours later a barn owl came in with a broken wing. He was in a drawstring bag, hanging on for dear life with his own set of razor talons. As we coaxed him out, he hopped neatly onto the leather gauntlet I now wore for protection, scrambled up my arm and embedded his talons in my bicep like a bunch of fish hooks. We had to thread his talons back out through the flesh of my arm to extricate him which is an exercise I would not choose to repeat. A few days later I was bitten by a rampaging monkey and added stitches to my list of woes. We have taken in 3 tiny baby vervet monkeys, all orphaned tragically. The babies will join our vervet monkey family once they are a little older and in the meantime are being lovingly cared for by Ellen Ciampi and her family, to whom we are very grateful. As the babies are all bottle fed and are also extremely active and demanding, this is quite a job! We have extended our baboon enclosure, much to the delight of Sheila and Lois, who also have a swimming pool. It is wonderful to see little Lois, so deeply traumatised and ill when she arrived, doing spectacular dive bombs into the pool and showing off wildly to her audience. Rob Follet-Smith and his family continue to provide the means to raise these little orphans and their generous support of our projects makes all the difference to the lives of our baby animals. Thomas Wicke, Heather Guild of Valley Fresh, Andrew Diamondes of PNN Produce, the Cullen Family, Tracey from Bromley Tannery, the Watson family, Eira Kramer, Caroline and Alex Morris-Eyton, Kelly Anne Hendrikz who so kindly supplies us with fresh milk each week, Leanne Byrom and Steve Watt (who never forgets the smaller predators - Straus and Alice the domestic cats), Friends of Paradise Widlife and our special friends Sandie and Chalkie van Schalkwyk - the consistent and valuable support of these people makes it possible for us to give our animals the happy, healthy lives they are entitled to. We are delighted that our Overseas Volunteer Programme is back on track for next year. Click here for more details of this unique programme. The Bally Vaughan Sanctuary Cook Book is now on sale at the Twenty Four Hour Veterinary Surgery and at the Sanctuary. ALL the proceeds from this project go directly to the welfare of the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary animals as all production costs were donated. We also have Bally Vaughan Sanctuary shopping bags and aprons on sale - great Christmas gifts! Our Game Ranger Days are also the perfect present for kids aged between 7 and 12 and will be held every Wednesday of the School Holidays, from 9am to 5pm at a cost of $30 per child. Sponsor a Bally Vaughan Sanctuary family member as a Christmas gift for someone special. Please contact us for more details on sarah@ballyvaughan.co.zw or ramlaulv@gmail.com or carol@powerspeed.co.zw TEL: 0912 592 942 or 4, 0912 264 160, 011 601 131, 0912 337 037 or 04 497588 Please note that you DO NOT HAVE TO BOOK TO VISIT THE SANCTUARY! Our entrance fee is based on $3 for an adult and $2 for a child. We are open from 9am to 5pm every day except Mondays (unless Monday is a public holiday). Our Gazebo restaurant and bar are open all day, serving light meals and drinks. We are OPEN ALL THROUGH THE FESTIVE SEASON, including the 22nd December, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. PREDATOR FEEDING is at 4pm every day. Every day is a challenge to keep the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary operational in the current chaos of Zimbabwe. Every day that our animals receive the care and love that they deserve is a truimph for us all. Every animal rescued and rehabilitated is a another step towards a better future, another reason to hope, and most especially the reason we never give up. We never, ever give up. Please help us to keep moving forward. Visit the Sanctuary these holidays, sponsor an animal, become involved in one of the Sanctuary projects, forward this newsletter. The animals we love so much and the people who make it possible for them to find a safe haven here are what makes the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary family a reason to believe in the good things that still happen in this country. With love Sarah and the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary Family
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