A Sense of Smell

Visited the 'baiting' site around 8pm on Friday night and strung up a 'new' maggot infested neck of beef to replace the one stolen by the leopard during the week. The smell of the rotting meat, which has been lying in the hot sun in the back of Elle's bakkie for two days was beginning to overpower the campsite and I'm glad it's now hanging from a tree in the bush five miles away. (Elle's olifactory senses have its seems, become inured to the smell of rotting meat over the years, and it doesn't seem to bother her much!) We also threw out bones and some left over Zebra meat. Hidden amongst these 'scraps' was a piece of meat, containing 75 milligrams Dormicum sedative which will cause drowsiness in a hyena, enough to allow Elle to fire a Zoletil tranquiliser dart and put it to sleep.

Within half an hour of playing 'squealy pig' noises over the loudspeakers, an old female hyena pitched up to investigate. Elle calls her the 'big grey one' or alternatively 'the old bitch'. We watched her for almost two hours, as she ate the scraps and wandered back and forwards. But before Elle could dart her, she suddenly disappeared. Such is the unpredictability of wild animals.

On Saturday, Elle, Robin and I drove to Katima to pick up Kath, a mutual friend of ours from Cape Town who is coming to stay for a few days. Kath wants to start a walking safari business in the Caprivi and has several meetings lined up. Starting a business here, is no easy task. 'Joint Venture' are the key words. Which means, any business idea, has to involve the local community at 'stakeholder' level.

The Seventh Day Adventists have upped and gone. Woken by the birds this morning which sound like a hundred ringtones all going off simultaneously.