Day Fourteen: Time Flies

I can hardly believe that I have already been here at the Dell for two weeks now. I didn't even realize it until I sat down and wrote "Day Fourteen". It is completely mind boggling. I still have a hard time just wrapping my mind around the fact that I am in South Africa, and that I get to work with cheetahs every day. It funny that now cheetahs seem such a normal part of life. It is going to be such a shock when I go home and the only felines around will be small enough to fit in my lap and will not require raw horse meat. All of this reflecting has gotten my thinking about how different and yet how similar life is even when on the opposite side of the world. Even though I am on the opposite side of the world from Ohio, I still feel very at home here with the animals and with the people I am lucky enough to meet and to work alongside. Anyways, that's enough reflection for today. I still have another two weeks to go, and plenty of time to ruminate over it all!
This morning started off early because we had a cheetah run. It is steadily getting chillier in the mornings, so scat duty is becoming more desirable while water duty is becoming less desireable due to the tendency to freeze one's fingers off when trying to change the water. Luckily, the weather was a little milder this morning and my fingers did not suffer too terribly. As for the cheetah run, we ran Tessa. Tessa is Estelle's cheetah. While all the cheetahs here at the Dell are owned by Estelle, Tessa is Estelle's baby. And while she may be Estelle'e baby and be all cute and cuddly around her, she will certainly eat anyone else who comes near her. Thus, Estelle was present at this morning's run. Tessa did pretty well the first two runs, but the last run was more of a walk that turned into a nap. But it was a good effort, nonetheless.
After the run, Pieter and Estelle drove us back to the house and also tried to break into Liante's car, to no avail. Pieter called a locksmith who came out and opened the door for her in under 5 seconds. I kid you not. He just stuck a little balloon thing in between the door and the frame, pumped it up, and slipped a little wire hook into the opening and popped the lock. After we spent nearly two hours of fruitless fishing around with dissassembled coat hangers last night, this locksmith had the audacity to open up the lock right in front of us in two seconds flat. He didn't even pretend like there was any difficulty. Unbelieveable.
After that debacle, we had to do some maintainance. This mostly involved cleaning out the cheetah dens and putting down hay inside of the clean dens to keep the cheetahs warm at night. Those of you who know me well also know that I am allergic to grass and hay. So. I had a bit of a runny nose. As Dane was so kind to point out, I chose to come to a grassland biome and work with cats despite the fact that I am allergic to grass and cats. At least I'm not allergic to work. It's okay, though, because Leante is allergic to grass and cats and she's actually from here.
After all of that hard work, we went home and prepared a wonderful lunch involving wraps with chicken strips (fake for me), tomatos, lettuce, cheese, peppers, and dressing. Compared to the usual cold spread we usually make ourselves, this was a feast fit for kings.
After lunch was just down time. I folded laundry, because I'm terribly exciting like that. Then there was cheetah time, and I got to sit with Nala for a while (YAY!) and she exfoliated my legs again. Nikita and Nala were being particularly cute today.

Nala on the left, Nikita on the right

The cubs were pretty grumpy and lazy again today. One of these days we will convince them to play. I may have to get some catnip or laser pointers involved....
Other than that, its been a quiet evening. We've just had a nice dinner, since it's Paul's last night, and now we're going to go sit under the stars for a while.
I just feel like I should mention that there is a very upset donkey braying extremely loudly outside my window for the past few nights. Of all the things to keep me awake in South Africa, how does an ass end up being the culprit noise-maker?

Okay, that's all!
Taylor