Day Fifteen: These boots were made for walking

This is what I woke up to this morning:

I much prefer this to decapitated rodents. Fury is such a cute kitty. Anyways, because it was Sunday we were allowed to sleep in all the way to 7:30 A.M. Then it was normal water and poo duty, followed by bones! Sunday is bone day, which means that the cheetahs get bones in the morning and we get the rest of the day off. So after feeding bones, we wolfed down a quick breakfast and then Dane took Paul and I for a bushwalk. It was a nice long bushwalk, but it was also rather warm and the animals weren't making many appearances. Dane and Paul did spot a few animals, and I spotted a few interesting spoors (animal tracks).

Red Hartebeest

Plains Zebra

Giraffe says hello!

Eland

Vervet Monkey Spoor

Caracal Spoor

Porcupine Spoor

After the bushwalk, we returned back to home base for some lunch. Paul finished packing up and then it was time to bid farewell. Paul is off to take care of some elephants for the next two weeks in a different part of South Africa. We will miss his British humor as well as his cooking! I hope to see some pictures of elephants with Paul in the near future.
Once Paul was off, Dane and I went down to the Vaal River to do some bird and animal watching. There wasn't a bunch of unusual animals, but I did see a full-grown water monitor. Some of you may recall the cute little guy with a crab in his mouth from one of my earlier posts. I thought this is what a full grown monitor looked like. It turns out that that guy was actually a baby, because the adults are very large. They are also big chickens when compared to the bold youngling I saw the first week I was here. They retreated into the water so quickly that I couldn't whip my camera out in time to snap any photos. Another baby monitor did come out eventually, and he let me take photos. I did manage to take photos of some other animals, most of which were birds.

African Darter

Yellow-billed Egret

Water Monitor

We basically spent the whole day wondering around the river and the Dell. We didn't even get back to the house until around 5, at which point a shower was much desired. Then came the discovery that the hot water pressure was not working. So, cold shower it was. Oh well.
Then came dinner and now we are just watching some tele. Nothing much exciting, but it was a good day.

Over and out,
Taylor